






















Gass^.'"R i /:'!_ 

Book .H 12 _ 

Copy 2 . 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 





















THIS NATION.UNDER GOD 


“ — that this nation, under God, shall have a 
new birth of freedom ” Abraham Lincoln 





















































































































































































































































































































































































THE RAUSCHENBUSCH LECTURESHIP FOUNDATION 
OF THE COLGATE-ROCHESTER DIVINITY SCHOOL 
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK 


the rauschenbusch foundation was established in March 
1929 at the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in memory 
of the late Walter Rauschenbusch, illustrious exponent of 
social Christianity and, from 1902 to 1918, professor of 
church history in Rochester Theological Seminary, to 
which institution the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School 
is successor. 

The movement for the establishment of this foundation 
was initiated by a gift of ten thousand dollars from Mrs. 
Edmund Lyon, of Rochester, New York, conditioned upon 
the raising of twenty-five thousand dollars from other 
sources. An amount somewhat in excess of that sum was 
secured through the generous gifts of citizens of Rochester, 
alumni of Rochester Theological Seminary, and others. 

The general field of the lectureship is that of Christianity 
in its social expression and application. A series of lec¬ 
tures upon this foundation is to be given annually during 
Alumni Week in the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, 
these lectures to be published in book form and known as 
the Rauschenbusch Lectures. 



Publications on 

THE RAUSCHENBUSCH LECTURESHIP FOUNDATION 


The Moral Crisis in Christianity 

Justin Wroe Nixon 

The Social Gospel and the Christian Cultus 

Charles Clayton Morrison 

The Social Triumph of the Ancient Church 

Shirley Jackson Case 

An Interpretation of Christian Ethics 
Reinhold Niebuhr 

Brotherhood Economics 

Toyohiko Kagawa 

Church and State in the Modern World 

Henry Pitney Van Dusen, et al. 

This Nation Under God 

Arthur Erastus Holt 



THIS NATION 
UNDER GOD 

☆ 


ARTHUR E. HOLT 

Professor of Social Ethics , 
Chicago Theological Seminary 
and 

The Divinity School , 

The University of Chicago 


Willett, Clark & Company 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 


1939 



Copyright i 939 by 
ARTHUR E. HOLT 


Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mass.-LaPorte, Ind. 


MAR -4 1940 

C^Cl A 1 37930 






Dedicated 


To those thousands of men 
who till the soil and furnish 
the cities with pure food, not because 
they have to but because they want to, 
and in their organized activities 
constitute the one hope of 
democratic regionalism. 












Contents 


From the Author to the Reader i 

The Soil in which Democracy Grows 5 

Responsible Living in a Democracy 10 

How the American People Became Irresponsible 37 

Democracy’s Competitors 57 

Christianity and Democracy in the Primary Re¬ 
lationships of Life 74 

Christianity and Democracy in the Public Order 85 

The Church Nourishing the Roots of Democracy 126 

The Church in Social Education and Social Ac¬ 
tion 153 

Worship as Basic Self-Direction 181 









Acknowledgments 

Through the courtesy of the Colgate-Rochester Theo¬ 
logical Seminary, I was asked to deliver the Rauschen- 
busch Lectures for 1938. Some of the material included 
in these lectures I have used in Christendom and also 
in a book, published by the Pilgrim Press, entitled The 
Church and Social Work , and in another book, published 
by the Association Press, entitled The Bible as a Commu¬ 
nity Book. All this material is now out of print, but I 
wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Pilgrim Press 
and to the Association Press for the privilege of reusing it. 

I am greatly indebted to Dr. Anton T. Boisen for the 
reading of the manuscript and to Miss Margaret Medland 
for her careful, painstaking work in copying and correct¬ 
ing it. ' 


Arthur E. Holt 



THIS NATION UNDER GOD 










































































































































































































































: 






















































































































































































































From the Author to the Reader 


We are witnessing a tumultuous search for new com- 
munities of responsible living. These new communities 
may be paternalistic; if so they will fall before some future 
revolution. Or they can be democratic and become part 
of the fabric of a society which works for the spiritual ma¬ 
turity of humanity. A part of the road back to responsible 
living will be the rediscovery of a sense of community 
which will perform the function that the old simple com¬ 
munity performed, but will do it in terms of modern life. 
Manifestly it is neither possible nor profitable to return to 
the early economy of home production and neighborhood 
consumption. The community of the future must deal 
with a world of railroads, steamships, labor unions and em¬ 
ployers’ associations, professional men and farmers. 

In the United States there have been two partial expres¬ 
sions of the community idea: first, a naive belief in the old 
simple type of community, which once was effective, 
wherein public opinion and mores temper the enthusi¬ 
asms of the individual person or group; second, an atti¬ 
tude which sees the government, local, state or federal as 
the symbol of community. The small face-to-face com¬ 
munity is the natural school for the learning of the mean¬ 
ing of responsible conduct. It is here that the early im¬ 
ages of life are formed in the mind. When people cease 
to live in families and villages they will find it increasingly 
hard to have a picture of God as a father and of other hu- 


2 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


man beings as brothers. The government as the symbol 
of community has its drawbacks. The popular belief has 
been that that government is best which governs least. 
The total result of this theory is resentment of all interfer¬ 
ence on the part of the government which seems to limit 
individual and group freedom. If the community was 
represented by the government the community had to be 
very inarticulate since, under the doctrine of laissez faire, 
we were taught that, if the individual and each group 
sought its own welfare, the public welfare was served. 
That is a very inadequate idea, as we are rapidly learning. 

In between the small community and community as rep¬ 
resented by the government, there was very little social con¬ 
trol of a large share of American life. The professions car¬ 
ried on with an eye to their own prestige and development. 
The great class-conscious groups of traders, farmers, labor¬ 
ers and consumers considered themselves social ultimates 
and there was no overarching unit which made them all 
conscious that they existed for something besides them¬ 
selves. The city was an aggregation of self-seeking groups 
and there was no larger community which must be served 
if the economic body was to be full of health. 

Now it is just the recovery of a sense of community in 
these areas which is the problem of responsible living at 
the present time. We have moved out beyond the social 
control of the small community. We are represented only 
in the field of government in this larger area. The tre¬ 
mendous enthusiasm with which people are turning to 
the state grows out of the popular belief that the state is 
this larger community which has the right to control all 
the lesser parts. The state, then, takes control in culture, 
in the professions, in the vocations; ultimately it must take 


FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER 3 

control of life in the cities; and so you have the formula for 
a totalitarian state. Unless we can discover a type of com¬ 
munity which carries with it a certain moral authority and 
which can temper man’s hunger for prestige and power in 
the professions and in the field of economics, we will have 
to accept the state as our ultimate community and allow it 
to regiment our lives. 

Let us frankly affirm that the organization of farmer, 
laborer and consumer into their relative groups is to be 
encouraged. There can be no ethics without power, and 
power must return to the disinherited and power must be 
taken from those who have appropriated more than their 
share of it. We cannot go on in a trader-controlled world. 

There are those who would solve the problem by taking 
power away from all industrial groups and transferring it 
to the government. So far as power is concerned the gov¬ 
ernment would add to its political power the economic 
power of farmer, laborer, trader and consumer. Here 
is the adolescent stage of the totalitarian state. 

Democracy has not given us an organic society; it has 
given us an atomistic society full of cleavages. It has not 
given us a just society; its privileges have been laid at the 
feet of the capitalist class. Democracy boasts of freedom 
of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of the pulpit, 
but these slogans often hide an indefensible selfishness and 
a bondage which can be easily exposed. The question 
whether democracy will survive seems to hinge on whether 
the values of democracy can be maintained while we 
achieve some fellowship of functions which represent both 
freedom and that organic quality which society must have, 
without accepting the state as the instrument of this or¬ 
ganic life. 


4 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


Christianity, with its concern for ultimate spiritual 
growth on the part of human beings, views this modern 
struggle for power and it cannot refrain from asking: 
“ Which one of these attempts at community building has 
a concern for the spiritual growth of the individual and 
seems most likely to give us a social order whose cohesion 
is based on social faith and trust? ” It cannot lose sight of 
the ineffectiveness of democracy in dealing with questions 
of economic justice. It cannot be blind to the hypocrisies 
of so-called freedom, but it also faces the fact that totali¬ 
tarian states leave very small opportunity for the exercise 
of independence and the use of the imagination on the 
part of common man. It will see that the task of democ¬ 
racy is to believe that people can be loyal to self-chosen 
goals and can be held together by a trust and a love which 
are more compelling than force or fear. 


The Soil in which Democracy Grows 

If you cross the Rio Grande river into Mexico and start 
traveling south, you will have at your back the two largest 
countries in the western hemisphere which profess a be¬ 
lief in democracy, and you will travel far before you come 
to another. If democracy means freedom of function and 
mutual cooperation among church, state, school and busi¬ 
ness, Mexico knows little of it. If democracy means that 
the gains of a commonwealth are mass gains and are to be 
shared by all in the nation, you will not find it in the semi- 
feudal, fascist-tending commonwealths of the South Amer¬ 
ican continent. Underneath the white populations which 
possess the power in South America there is an inarticulate, 
ancient civilization which has not advanced very much be¬ 
yond the primitive tribal life in which the white man dis¬ 
covered it. Democracy is an empty word so far as South 
America is concerned, and one need not be surprised that 
new forms of government, which do not feel under any ob¬ 
ligation to keep up the pretensions of a democratic ideol¬ 
ogy, are coming into being on that continent. 

If you cross from South America to Africa, you will find 
a gigantic area gripped in the various devices of European 
and colonial control. A comparatively small number of 
white men, backed by the armies of the homeland and as¬ 
sisted by government-owned railroads and industries, hold 
in a tight industrial and agricultural peonage millions of 

5 


6 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


natives who can no longer call the Dark Continent their 
own. Africa makes no pretensions in the direction of 
democracy. 

Crossing from Africa to Asia you will come upon an an¬ 
cient caste system thinly overlaid by a veneer of Western 
imperialistic capitalism, neither of which professes to be 
democratic. There is much to be said for the ancient caste 
system which, in both India and China, puts the scholar at 
the top and gives him the highest award because of his sup¬ 
posed creative ability. But democracy, if it calls for equal 
opportunity for every man, is not discoverable in the Ori¬ 
ent. Nor does Japan, which at the moment seems the Ori¬ 
ent’s leading nation, make any pretensions in this direction. 

If you turn back to Europe, the home of the democracies, 
you will travel as far west as Switzerland before you come 
to a country which believes, in government of the people, 
by the people and for the people. Countries like Russia, 
Germany and Italy challenge the political democracies of 
the world and insist that all the assumptions of democracy 
are the outworn slogans of a capitalistic age. The British 
empire carries on with a modified democracy. It does not 
democratize social life inside the empire nor has it alto¬ 
gether democratized its economic life. Democracy seems 
to abide in the countries which developed the democratic 
way of life when they were small. They are now desper¬ 
ately hanging on to the love of their youth. 

Now, without insisting too strongly on the causal rela¬ 
tionships, we can discern in these democratic countries cer¬ 
tain concomitant relationships which seem to characterize 
all the countries in which democracy is a success. They 
are the relationships of people who want to make choices, 
who take responsibility and seek fellowship. Certain char- 


THE SOIL IN WHICH DEMOCRACY GROWS 7 

acteristics seem to be common to all countries which suc¬ 
cessfully maintain democratic government. 

The prevailing type of religion in the democratic coun¬ 
tries is one which lays a great deal of emphasis on free¬ 
dom of the individual and relies for unity on fellowship 
rather than on authority and discipline. Most of the de¬ 
mocracies have followed Protestant teachings, which stress 
education and encourage large investments in schools and 
colleges. They have brought about a separation of church 
and state, and have recognized the right of the church to 
criticize the state and the right of the state to maintain ed¬ 
ucation which criticizes the church. Calvinism teaches 
that it is good Christianity to criticize the state, and it is 
interesting to note that none of the Calvinistic countries 
has accepted the totalitarian state. 

A second characteristic of the democratic countries is 
a certain encouragement for equality of opportunity in 
economic and social life. However far the democratic 
countries have departed from the ideal in practice, capi¬ 
talism originally was born as an attempt to give everyone a 
chance to take initiative in seeking economic salvation. 
The democratic countries have encouraged private initi¬ 
ative and then sought to secure for their people new oppor¬ 
tunities for economic and social advancement. 

A third characteristic of the democratic countries is a 
certain love for the smaller units of life — the family, the 
town, the village; in fact, democratic countries were origi¬ 
nally the small countries of the world. They have had a dis¬ 
trust of big mass movements. Today they occupy a great 
part of the earth’s surface, but sprawling as they have be¬ 
come in some cases, they are made up largely of self-articu¬ 
lated parts, such as the states of our country or the separate 


8 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


entities of the British empire. Democracy demands for 
its healthy growth a comprehensible community in which 
it is possible for the individual to exercise will power, pur¬ 
pose and intelligence over social areas which are close at 
hand. Such a condition is found in nations where, for one 
reason or another, there has been a willingness to recog¬ 
nize what has been called “ the logic of littleness.’* 

A fourth characteristic of the democratic countries is a 
fairly consistent refusal to glorify the state and make pa¬ 
triotism a supreme virtue. Their great days of memory 
and celebration are those which recall occasions when the 
people rose up and took control of the government. 

A fifth characteristic is a respect for truth, which ex¬ 
presses itself in freedom of teaching, freedom of the press, 
freedom of research. Education is organized around goals 
which are indigenous to the educational purpose, not 
around the short-time objectives of some church, class, race 
or state. 

I call these characteristics of democracy, which are so 
much more than political and really constitute a constella¬ 
tion of super-political factors, the soil in which democracy 
grows. Democracy is not to be identified with the rural or 
the urban as such. Its natural soil is neither Tobacco Road 
nor the Sidewalks of New York. Democracy awaits peo¬ 
ple who want to make choices, take responsibility and 
share power through appropriate social institutions; the 
cry for dictators comes from mobs on the city streets and 
from disinherited peasants. Democracy is not a political 
theory which exists by itself. It requires a certain balance 
among all the functions of life. It cannot be argued or 
fought or legislated into existence. We lose it when we 
try to bring it in by war. Shouting drowns it out, and the 


THE SOIL IN WHICH DEMOCRACY GROWS 9 

trappings of parades hide its stalwart virtues. We can have 
democracy only as we are willing to make it a fact about 
our total life. 

The question then whether you “ believe in democracy ” 
is the question whether you believe in a certain set of re¬ 
lationships— spiritual, economic, social and political — 
actually existing among people in a way that can be called 
democratic. It is a tribute to the realism of the present 
world that a very large part of it has ceased to pretend that 
it professes the creed of democracy, and that a very large 
number of the professed democracies have recognized that 
democracy is not just a label you wear on your coat, but a 
principle which calls for a characteristic organization of 
all of human life. Therefore, it is not to be entered into 
hastily or inadvisedly but thoughtfully, prayerfully, and 
in the fear of God and men. 



Responsible Living in a Democracy 

Something awful has happened to Christendom. It is more 
than the paralysis of commerce, though that is a part of it. It 
is more than industrial debility, which surely is a part of the 
cataclysm. It is more than political reaction and apathy that 
chokes and poisons the springs of progress. It is something 
deeper than the social decadence which is seen in every caste 
and class and country — the loosening of moral stays and the 
wilting of ancient standards. The things that are so hope¬ 
lessly apparent in the realms of business, of industry, of poli¬ 
tics, of the social order, are mere symptoms of a spiritual dis¬ 
ease. Christendom is sick for lack of Christianity. Faith is 
dying — faith in men largely. For it is faith that bellies the 
sails of commerce when the ship goes out; faith that honest 
men will man her, that honest men will take her cargo, that 
honest men will send back a decent gain to the owners. It is 
faith that makes men sweat in industry; faith that their day’s 
work will bring them a decent living, that their day’s planning 
will yield them a good profit. Faith is the centripetal force 
that holds men together in states, in nations, in associated 
power; faith that the word of rulers is dependable, faith that 
the common sense of the people may be trusted to respond to 
humanity’s decent needs under government. Faith holds the 
home inviolate, and makes the social compact strong and 
wholesome. 

And the Golden Rule, which is the essence of the Christian 
philosophy, is the basis of faith. But the Golden Rule is badly 
tarnished today. It has fallen into desuetude. The pessimist, 

IO 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 11 

the grouch, the greedy-gut, even the cynic, are expounding the 
world’s current philosophy, and everywhere men are dwelling 
in fear. The terror of a vast unbelief is gripping mankind in 
some sort of spiritual glacial epoch, which threatens chaos . 1 

Such a diagnosis would not necessarily apply to a totali¬ 
tarian state, but it applies with vengeance to a democracy. 
When Fletcher Dobyns said, “ Only a moral revolution can 
save Chicago,” he was stating a very trite but profoundly 
true fact not only about Chicago but about all democratic 
civilizations. For democracy is an adventure between the 
individual and society which assumes that where they are 
free the individual and the social group can work out 
through cooperative interplay a satisfying type of common 
welfare. But that adventure can reach successful consum¬ 
mation only if both the individual and society are responsi¬ 
ble to something higher than either. Democracy’s one 
hope of meeting its competitors lies not in a distribution 
of power — although that may play a part — but in a dis¬ 
tribution of moral responsibility whereby the individual 
unit maintains its right to make a contribution to the to¬ 
tal welfare and also accepts its obligation to work for the 
common welfare. 

This peculiar moral quality of democracy becomes 
clearer by contrast. For instance, the essential difference 
between Denmark and Germany is that Germany seeks 
the common welfare through state planning, which is in 
the hands of the elite and is enforced upon the mass of the 
people through state agencies of propaganda. Denmark, 
on the other hand, began with a moral revolution fathered 
by a young man named Grundtvig. Facing the problem 
of renewal in his impoverished country, he took as his life 
slogan: “ That which I have lost outwardly I will win in- 


12 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


wardly.” He felt that moral and spiritual renewal must 
run ahead of social change. And so he did not seek di¬ 
rectly to reconstruct his nation. Instead he established a 
system of schools in which teachers could speak only the 
“ living word ” which would perpetually bring new in¬ 
ward life to the people. Social renewal has followed. A 
cooperative society, held together not by force and fear 
but by the social cohesion of faith and trust, has gradually 
displaced the sterile, autocratic society of Grundtvig’s day. 
Denmark has maintained freedom. Its individual citizens 
have achieved spiritual maturity, and so common welfare 
has found adequate and definite expression. 

Democracy is also an adventure among the individual 
social functions such as agriculture, industry, the profes¬ 
sions, the church and the state. Here the assumption is 
that, if each function is separate and free, all will be able 
to work toward social coordination. From this point of 
view democracy is essentially an adventure in faith and 
ethics. Along the highway which connects the different 
functions of society with one another there must be built 
up and recognized a system of rights and duties which 
charts the behavior that guards both freedom and responsi¬ 
bility. Failing this, democracy fails. If one function 
abuses its freedom all the other functions are tempted to 
do likewise. The result is chaos. 

As one thinks of all the various types of individuals and 
social functions, each with its tendencies to willfulness, 
provincialism and inefficiency, one is appalled at the faith 
of those who believe that the modern world, thrown to¬ 
gether by all the techniques of modern communication and 
transportation, can ever achieve a satisfying type of human 
welfare. The longing for a dictator, divine or human, 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 13 

who will take off our shoulders the burden of self-govern¬ 
ment, overwhelms us. Certainly men do not want to stay 
up nights to keep society running. Yet do any of us really 
believe that Jehovah will relieve us of the task? 

To a greater degree than we are willing to realize, ordi¬ 
nary social change is a matter of moral revolution rather 
than of social reorganization. Moral attitudes are the 
foundation upon which freedom and community life rest. 
There is no new kind of society which does away with the 
need of integrity and social trust. Integrity is necessary to 
any kind of achieved freedom. This does not in any way 
dispense with the need for technical arrangement and well 
ordered social procedure. They all go together. But basic 
to all of them is that constellation of attitudes which we are 
accustomed to classify as moral. 

Let us take a very simple illustration. Anyone who ever 
witnessed one of the old traffic jams in the bottle-neck 
which once existed at the foot of Michigan boulevard, 
Chicago, has seen on a small scale an irresponsible mob. 
In the old horse-and-buggy days the one bridge across the 
river took care of traffic that did not range very far from 
its home base. But presently, in place of the horse and 
buggy there appeared a thousand automobiles each rep¬ 
resenting twenty horse power and more, all meeting at the 
old bridge at five o’clock in the afternoon. Furious at the 
way they obstructed one another they voiced their impa¬ 
tience in human shouts and mechanized screams. Their 
hysteria grew with their own noise. The powerful became 
convinced that they must take the responsibility for their 
own self-preservation and began to crowd the little cars to 
the wall. Police became gesticulating pygmies submerged 
in a mass of milling futility. It was chaos in miniature. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


14 

To talk about love and mutual aid in this situation seemed 
like sprinkling eau de cologne on a cage filled with fighting 
polecats. And yet out of that chaos, an epitome of all traf¬ 
fic jams, orderly procedure has emerged, without a return 
to the horse-and-buggy age. Some of the methods by which 
we have created order suggest what is involved in the con¬ 
quering of the world mobs of irresponsible individuals. 

There was, first of all, a sense of total involvement. We 
all wanted to “ go places and see things,” but since we got 
into one another’s way and fought and destroyed one an¬ 
other we all decided to stay at home. This interdepend¬ 
ence, combined with the capacity to sense it, was basic to 
everything else. 

With the growing sense of interdependence came a dis¬ 
like for the claims of special privilege. We knew that the 
“ road-hog ” or the driver who “ shot the traffic ” started a 
procedure which could not be universalized, and ulti¬ 
mately defeated not only the rest of us but himself as well. 
(There may be legitimate claims for special privilege, as 
on the part of the ambulance or the fire-engine, but such 
claims have been socialized in advance since their privilege 
is for the sake of the larger good.) Adjustment called for 
a very large amount of individual decision. We took care 
not to run into this person or that automobile, not because 
some policeman stood by and told us not to; the driver 
made his decision and the other person made his decision 
and they passed without collision, because they were aware 
of each other. Men are not robots; they are creatures who 
can anticipate through imagination and therefore have 
freedom. 

The traffic light on the main highway came to be a lan¬ 
guage which we all understood and increasingly paid at- 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 15 

tention to. It is a signal which symbolizes our independ¬ 
ence and ultimate freedom. (But we want these traffic 
lights to be located at the main crossings and not in back 
alleys. Some time ago in a small Virginia village I saw a 
man and a cow standing in the middle of the street. There 
was no other traffic in sight. I could not understand why 
they were standing still until I looked up and noticed that 
they were waiting for the green light. It was a perfectly 
good traffic light located at an unimportant crossing.) 

Custom played its part in resolving the tangle. We turn 
to the right. In many other countries traffic turns to the 
left. This anticipated type of procedure governed by cus¬ 
tom also promotes freedom. Again, the engineer, by build¬ 
ing underpasses and overpasses, by rounding corners into 
curves, by placing broad roads where traffic is heaviest, 
lessened the probability of accident and fostered common 
welfare. The traffic cop and the law court which dealt 
with the seeker of special privilege by adjudicating doubt¬ 
ful cases became servants of peace and free procedure. 

Thus our traffic jams are resolved into an ordered pro¬ 
cedure whereby people may go places and see things with¬ 
out returning to the horse-and-buggy age, because we set 
up a larger society to which the individual can surrender 
and find freedom. 

Now it is clear that good engineering plays a part in the 
solution of this problem, that adequate laws and customs 
and law courts are a part of it; but basic to this transforma¬ 
tion is a change of attitude which can be classified only as 
a moral revolution. There is a new awareness of inter¬ 
dependence. There is a new hatred of special privilege. 
There is a new sense of consideration for the rights of the 
other fellow. Even the instrumentalities of law and force 


i6 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


rest back upon a perception which makes them instru¬ 
ments of cooperation rather than of compulsion. 


If we discern in the fairly simple relationships of good 
highway procedure the basic necessity for moral and spir¬ 
itual renewal, how much more do these considerations have 
weight for the vastly complicated procedures of the whole 
of society! Democracy was not forbiddingly difficult in 
the age of homespun when an ever expanding frontier took 
care of our mistakes, but democracy in today’s overpopu¬ 
lated cities is serious business. In the interest of general 
welfare we have given the ballot to everyone but we have 
discovered that universal suffrage develops its own kind of 
predatory conduct. We have had autocracy in industry, 
and if there is any salvation in control by the elite it 
should have materialized through the autocratic rule of 
business or through the city manager system, but these also 
developed their own type of predatory action. Shift and 
change social organization as we will and as we must, the 
fact remains that any kind of system rests back upon a sense 
of moral values on the part of the population. 

The task before us requires all that we can muster of 
reason, of skill, of courage. It would be the height of fu¬ 
tility for us to increase our panic by hysterical screaming 
about the awfulness of it. Some are more public-minded 
than others but verbal assassination of fellow sufferers in 
the midst of an interdependent world is the best prelimi¬ 
nary to war and the poorest preparation for peace. It 
would be equally futile to try to solve our problem by at¬ 
tempting to go back to the age of barter and neighborhood 
production and consumption. As John Woolman would 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 17 

say, it would seem to be in accordance with the will of 
God that men should trade and sail the high seas. 

If we would save democracy we must first of all recog¬ 
nize the fact of our interdependence. We are in a jam be¬ 
cause we cannot escape one another. Since we are inter¬ 
dependent we should search out zealously those seekers of 
special privilege who will not only destroy this world for 
others but will ultimately defeat themselves. To declare 
that this world belongs to the one who asserts most force 
is false. Such a world arouses not the capacity for large 
interdependence but evokes more force, and those who live 
by the sword in the end perish by the sword. 

As on the less pretentious highway, individual decision 
as to what is for the common good will be a very large part 
of a total program of adjustment. We can avoid collision 
with the other fellow if we use our imagination and ask 
what would be good procedure for ourselves if we were in 
his place. Also, accepted customs which work for orderly 
procedure on a small scale can be projected into a larger 
world. There are ways and habits which belong to the 
good neighbor. Neighborliness is not dependent upon the 
traffic cop. 

Good social engineering which frees and does not re¬ 
strict this interdependent world will pave the pathway of 
peace and democracy. Nor is it within reason to believe 
that business and government can be conducted without a 
traffic cop and a court. So long as claimants for special 
privilege will not listen to reason they will have to be 
eliminated by other methods. 

Yet the world that lives by traffic cops and legal proce¬ 
dure has already failed. Nothing other than a moral revo¬ 
lution can save us if we are to carry on as a democracy. 


i8 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


Democracy assumes ideas and attitudes which men hold as 
they hold their religion. They are great upspringing con¬ 
victions which root in what one feels about the total cosmic 
structure. 


If there is any value in what is here written it lies in rec¬ 
ognition of the fact that the issues of a democratic civiliza¬ 
tion lie farther back than their institutional expression in 
family, profession, business organization and the state. 
This does not mean, as is so often asserted, that there is a 
personal world which is much more important than the 
social. No such line between personal and social can be 
drawn. The institution is a superficial and rather late 
form of life expression; society is not. The social and the 
personal are born together. Institutions, while impor¬ 
tant, come later and are always based on something more 
fundamental. Democracy as an institutional organization 
rests back on a conviction about the worth of all individ¬ 
uals and their proper relation to one another. This con¬ 
viction people hold because of the way they read the great 
cosmic drama of life. Men die for democracy because they 
believe that in committing themselves to it they can find 
the meaning of life and death. Man is never so wonderful 
as when he takes his readings of the cosmic constants and 
launches on the great pilgrimage, knowing that sooner or 
later physical death claims us all. The battle for a world in 
which there is respect for individuals, where men work to¬ 
gether in the unity of common purposes, must be won or 
lost on the field of those beliefs about man and his cosmic 
role — beliefs which belong to that constellation of ideas 
we call religion. 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY ig 

Society does not advance majority-end foremost, but 
there is good scriptural authority for the statement that 
prophets come in “ schools ” and not as single individuals. 
Three hundred years ago a tight-lipped generation, the 
merchant seamen of England, started out to conquer the 
deep. They are the men who lifted that little poverty- 
stricken island on the west coast of Europe to a dominating 
place in the world. They did it by adventurous coopera¬ 
tion, by charting the heavens and the vast oceans. As a col¬ 
lective attack on the hazards of the sea they organized great 
insurance companies, placed lighthouses on all the impor¬ 
tant coasts and charted the ocean currents. 

Among them there was a small group who adventured in 
the name of religion and of a better way of life. They set¬ 
tled on the bleak shores of Massachusetts and in the name 
of God planned and projected a commonwealth. The con¬ 
sciousness that they stood in a great historic succession of 
adventurers in the name of God was like a breeze from the 
ages filling the sails of the Pilgrim voyagers. To feel this 
was to believe that there is meaning in history. 

In the course of the years another group arrived in Mas¬ 
sachusetts. They were not welcomed by the first school of 
prophets. They were punished, persecuted and legislated 
against until they had to go to other parts of the country in 
order to win the chance to live. These people called them¬ 
selves Friends and their enemies called them Quakers. 
From their midst there came, in the latter part of the eight¬ 
eenth century, a man by the name of John Woolman. He 
shared with his fellow Friends certain great, vivid convic¬ 
tions. John Woolman meditated upon the world about 
him and out of his meditations he formulated principles 
like the following: “ True religion consists in an inward life 


20 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Cre¬ 
ator and learns to exercise true justice and goodness not 
only toward all men but also toward the brute creatures. 
In accordance with this idea he decided to live simply, 
without luxury, and to share so far as he could the burdens 
of his fellows — the dispossessed Indians, the overworked 
Negro slaves, the sailors who toiled on the high seas. It 
was a work of the imagination. So successful was he in 
enlarging the understanding and sympathy of his co-reli- 
gionists that twenty years after his death the Quakers of the 
country had voluntarily abolished slavery among them¬ 
selves. 

In a later day a group of young men went forth to take 
up their homesteads at the foot of the Rocky mountains in 
what was then known as the Great American Desert. They 
had a twofold fight on their hands. Nature out there was 
unfriendly, except to the rattlesnake, the prairie dog and 
the owl, which were having a fairly good time on the 
ground that lies east of the Rockies. There was water in 
the hills and it flowed down the lowest valleys into the 
Gulf of Mexico. But there was desert on the broad plains. 
Now the first task of these young men was to redirect the 
working of nature’s forces. Natural law did not specify 
just which hill water should flow down and there was noth¬ 
ing to hinder water from flowing down the highest hills in¬ 
stead of the lowest valleys if it could find the way. So the 
young men dug irrigation ditches. They guided the water 
along the highest hills and let it flow down to vivify the 
parched earth. 

Hand in hand with the struggle to overcome unfriendly 
nature went a fight to overcome the worn-out traditions of 
man. At that time the law of the United States declared 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 21 

that the water belonged to the man who owned the bank of 
the river. Now you cannot build an irrigation system so 
long as the water in the river is owned by the man who 
owns its bank. There had to be some sort of law whereby 
water could be taken from the river and legally spread over 
the land. The first men who dug irrigation ditches out in 
Colorado were sent to jail. It became necessary deliber¬ 
ately to violate the man-made law and accept punishment 
for the violation in order to convince a Supreme Court 
judge that the public welfare demanded a new law. After 
a number of men had gone to jail for trying to do a perfectly 
reasonable thing, three Supreme Court judges discovered 
why it was legal to take the water out of the river without 
consulting the owner of the bank. 

But this victory did not end the struggle. Next came a 
fight against the contemporary economic world. The cor¬ 
porations came in and forced down the price of the land’s 
products. The great power companies came in and tried 
to capture the natural power in the rivers and mountains 
for themselves. It was a battle on all fronts. Yet in the 
end the Great American Desert blossomed as the rose. 
The original pioneers died in poverty but later generations 
reaped the benefit of their prophetic vision. 

Years later there arose other conquerors very similar in 
temperament and disposition to those who defeated the 
desert. Souls like Jane Addams, Graham Taylor and Rob¬ 
ert A. Woods became the prophets who saw the Holy City 
in the midst of urban chaos. Up to 1890 American reli¬ 
gious and social idealism played around the frontiers of a 
rapidly developing continent. The eyes of the conquerors 
of waste places sought a new society on the new land. By 
1890, however, all the new land was occupied. Opportu- 


22 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


nities were no longer to be found in farming, mining or 
forestry. The so-called extractive industries had reached 
the saturation point. Opportunities were now to be found 
in factories and the accompanying vocations which make 
up what men do in cities. The new populations were be¬ 
ginning to concentrate in a strip of territory about two 
hundred miles wide stretching from the Mississippi river 
to the Atlantic coast, along the base of the Great Lakes and 
the Erie canal. This was a new migration. Hitherto north¬ 
ern Europe had been the great contributor of peoples. 
Now Italians, Poles, Czechs, Jews and other peoples from 
southern Europe, with strange customs and stranger lan¬ 
guages, crowded into the cities which were owned and 
ruled by old-line Americans. As they saw their cities rap¬ 
idly filling with these aliens many Americans were over¬ 
whelmed by a sense of despair. Here was a threat to the 
culture they were laboring to establish, an innocent but 
insidious attack upon the American way of life. Their 
only hope lay in strenuous conversion of these people to the 
so-called American way. It was a time of great anxiety. 
Social enthusiasm had to be turned from the western fron¬ 
tier to the places where great masses of men lived together. 

So far as the religious forces and many forces which did 
not profess religion were concerned, Graham Taylor, Jane 
Addams and Robert A. Woods became important leaders 
in this transition. Theirs was a pilgrimage of the holy im¬ 
agination. They moved into the center of the teeming 
urban populations and in a great act of self-identification 
took the city’s problems on themselves. To them the new¬ 
comers were not objects of horror, but people to be under¬ 
stood. They followed the path of John Woolman. They 
believed that these people loved their children and were 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 23 

ambitious for their advancement, that they suffered when 
their children and neighbors suffered, that injustice and 
bad politics were to be measured by their effect in the lives 
of ordinary men. They sought to understand and, having 
understood, formulated their understanding for a reluc¬ 
tant world. 

A few years later, out of this group of prophets, another 
group arose. Strife and conflict were rife in some of the 
great industries. In Chicago, for instance, the clothing 
workers suffered under a sweatshop system which, while it 
produced cheap clothes, left the workers without an op¬ 
portunity to satisfy their legitimate needs and desires. A 
small group of men of which James Mullenbach and Sid¬ 
ney Hillman were important members were convinced 
that it was possible to build an industrial society wherein 
men should work as economic citizens rather than as wage 
slaves. For many years they struggled, believing always 
that justice and fair dealing could win out over a world 
that was held together only by force and fear. Theirs was 
a new desert to be conquered for civilization. 


There is a Christian word by which we describe the qual¬ 
ities of men who venture out beyond the boundaries of cus¬ 
tom and become contenders for a redeeming God. That 
word is “ love.” But love has been so softened by senti¬ 
mentality that it has lost some of its power to challenge 
men. It is, however, the best word we have. What is this 
love? 

Love is divine ecstasy. Margaret Montague, facing the 
fact that she must become increasingly deaf and blind, en¬ 
ters into an experience whereby she can say she is madly 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


24 

in love with every human being and every living creature. 
Love is that. Love is psychic power. Stanley Daly, a hard¬ 
ened criminal, discovers that love releases more power in 
his life than was ever released by hate and he writes a book 
entitled Love Can Open Prison Doors. Love is that. 
Love is capacity for identification with the most needy of 
God’s creatures. John Woolman lives by putting himself 
in the place of the Negro and the Indian and the disinher¬ 
ited. Love is that. Love seeks the spiritual maturity of 
those with whom the lover comes in contact. Love is fi¬ 
delity to something more than inclination in the relation¬ 
ship of husband and wife, parent and child. It is that 
which redeems the relationship of the sexes. 

Love is neighborliness. It is that continuing attitude in 
the face-to-face contacts of the neighborhood which makes 
people feel a sense of lonesomeness when the good neigh¬ 
bor has gone. Love is public-mindedness. It is Governor 
Altgeld, with political reputation secure, laying that repu¬ 
tation upon the altar of justice by pardoning men of whose 
innocence he is satisfied and taking upon himself the hatred 
of a respectable world. It is Zola, candidate for the highest 
honors of France, sacrificing them all in the interests of jus¬ 
tice to a member of a hated race. It is Graham Taylor 
thinking and working for Chicago in his last conscious 
hour. Love is the capacity to seek justice in controversies 
which are weighted heavily by motives of class-conscious 
antipathy. 

Love is what Paul said it was — capacity to be patient, to 
seek no evil; love is not envious or boastful, it does not put 
on airs, it is not rude, it does not insist on its rights, it does 
not become angry, it is not resentful, it is not happy over 
injustice, it is happy only with the truth. Love will bear 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 25 

anything, believe anything, hope for anything, endure any¬ 
thing. Love will never die out. If there is inspired preach¬ 
ing it will pass away, if there is ecstatic speaking it will 
cease, if there is knowledge it will pass away. So faith, 
hope and love endure, and the greatest of these is love. 

John Woolman and Graham Taylor and all the desert 
conquerors represent the doctrine of divine love breaking 
forth in social projects. To be sure, they had no clear-cut 
programs but they had that from which programs must 
stem. They had social passion; they had a concern; they 
had the will to be benevolent. They had what I call the 
holy imagination — that is, imagination that envelops peo¬ 
ple with compassion, with a sense of oneness, with human¬ 
ity. That attitude, to my mind, is basic to any kind of so¬ 
cial program. 

The holy imagination is something that roots in the ec¬ 
stasy of divine love. If social conflict and social need are 
to be dealt with, this passion must be kept alive. It is the 
function of the church to keep it alive. If the church fails 
in this function the flame will flicker out, and then all pro¬ 
grams of social adjustment will become legalistic garments 
which can be fitted to humanity for a while; but humanity 
will ultimately throw them off because the designers did 
not first of all study in the school of compassion the in¬ 
ward nature of man. 

These prophetic groups are now faced with one of the 
greatest struggles in human history, a struggle not unlike 
that in the early Roman Empire, when the little in-group 
in western Palestine contended with Caesar. Today also 
totalitarian states claim ultimate sanctity for themselves 
and their short-time objectives. They spit upon compas¬ 
sion and declare that hatred is the dynamic of society. 


26 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


They force men into their image instead of allowing them 
to grow into the image of God. They remove from the in¬ 
dividual all responsibility save that of blind obedience. 

A sense of responsibility on the part of the individual is 
the very cornerstone of the democratic structure. But it 
should be emphasized that man’s sense of responsibility is 
not built by his focusing on himself. There is a sense in 
which he must focus on himself. 

To thine own self be true. 

And it must follow, as the night the day. 

Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

If a man fails to do what is right as he sees it he cannot be 
true to any larger issue. But man’s belief in himself alone 
cannot sustain him. When Admiral Byrd passed a winter 
in a dugout on an Antarctic ice barrier only twenty degrees 
from the South Pole, he nearly perished by asphyxiation 
from the fumes of his gasoline engine and his oil-burning 
stove. But even in his terrible weakness he felt that to give 
up would be betrayal. At the basis of his belief that he 
must hold out lay a conviction that a power beyond him¬ 
self was on his side and was demanding his allegiance. “ I 
am not alone; there is a power — many call it God.” 2 So 
man’s sense of responsibility roots in the conviction that he 
is not alone. He is not alone because what he is he owes 
partly to his neighbor. He is not alone because he finds 
himself in discovering, defining and defending great 
causes. He is working with God. 

Particularly when he makes decisions as to his loyalties 
man must remember God. Operating in these areas there 
is always an abundance of apostles who attempt to organize 
the wills of men around their own idea of what is su- 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 27 

premely worth while. Some appeal to this practical abso¬ 
lute and some to that — to race or class prejudice, to spe¬ 
cial privilege, to self-will. Here is the first crisis in ethical 
conduct. It has to do with the conflict of self-will over 
the will for the universal and all-inclusive good as con¬ 
ceived by the person. The second conflict, which grows 
out of the first and is even more acute, has to do with how 
that good is discovered. It is just at this point that the de¬ 
mand for selflessness is likely to land the individual in 
bondage to the past, to custom and law, and to add a re¬ 
ligious sanction to the status quo. A totalitarian state or 
a totalitarian industry can easily ask its members to be 
loyal and give up their self-will. If, however, the people 
relinquish their own self-will to a will which is defined by 
the self-will of someone else, or is just the self-will of a 
larger group, the inevitable result is some kind of slavery. 

If Hitler is right when he says that the mass of the people 
are “ silly sheep,” there is no hope for democracy. For de¬ 
mocracy presupposes that its individual members are ca¬ 
pable of acting in responsible fashion. 

The individual, then, is one focus of responsible living. 
What he thinks of himself will play a role in his behavior. 
But equally important are his relations to society and to 
God. What society thinks of him and what God thinks of 
him, together with his idea of himself, will determine his 
behavior. Responsible living focuses in these three: the 
individual, society and God. Hence the resources of re¬ 
sponsibility must be looked for in all three directions. Let 
us illustrate what we mean by responsible living. 

When Governor Altgeld faced the question of pardon- 


28 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


ing those who he thought had been unjustly convicted in 
the Haymarket Riots he gave the matter careful considera¬ 
tion and finally concluded: 

First — That the jury which tried the case was a packed jury 
selected to convict. 

Second — That, according to the law as laid down by the Su¬ 
preme Court, both prior to and again since the trial of this 
case, the jurors, according to their own answers, were not com¬ 
petent jurors, and the trial was, therefore, not a legal trial. 

Third — That the defendants were not proven to be guilty 
of the crime charged in the indictment. 

Fourth — That as to the defendant Neebe, the state’s attor¬ 
ney had declared at the close of the evidence that there was no 
case against him, and yet he had been kept in prison all these 
years. 

Fifth — That the trial judge was either so prejudiced against 
the defendants, or else so determined to win the applause of a 
certain class in the community, that he could not and did not 
grant a fair trial. 3 

One morning the governor announced to “ Buck ” Hin- 
richsen: 

“ I am going to pardon Fielden, Schwab and Neebe this 
morning. I thought you might like to sign the papers in per¬ 
son rather than have your signature affixed by your chief clerk.” 
He looked at Hinrichsen “ rather curiously.” 

“ Do you think it good policy to pardon them? ” asked Hin¬ 
richsen. Before Altgeld could answer, Hinrichsen quickly 
added that he did not think it was. 

Altgeld struck his desk with his fist. 

“ It is right! ” 4 

The raging of the respectable people of the United States 
knew no bounds. Young Theodore Roosevelt was espe- 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 29 

dally vociferous in his denunciation. Willis J. Abbot of¬ 
fered to introduce Roosevelt to Altgeld. 

. . . Roosevelt reared up and in a strident voice, heard 
through the Pullman car in which they were riding, announced 
he would not meet Altgeld socially — “ Because, sir, I may at 
any time be called upon to meet the man sword to sword upon 
the field of battle. . . . The sentiment now animating a large 
proportion of our people can only be suppressed, as the Com¬ 
mune in Paris was suppressed, by taking ten or a dozen of their 
leaders out, standing . . . them against a wall, and shooting 
them dead. I believe it will come to that.” 5 

Today we are witnessing a strange realignment of pub¬ 
lic opinion with reference to the relative merits of Theo¬ 
dore Roosevelt and John Peter Altgeld. 

In thus setting himself against the prejudices of a whole 
nation and acting in accordance with his sense of justice, 
Altgeld demonstrated responsible living. Responsible liv¬ 
ing includes the courage and capacity to break with all en¬ 
vironmental securities and to outline adventurous pro¬ 
grams of new good. There are those who warn us that men 
may become too responsible for their society and so wax 
conceited through success or land in despair through fail¬ 
ure. These sages fail to recognize that the really difficult 
task is to secure men who will not dodge responsibility. 
Human beings easily take refuge in bluffing, delusion, cyn¬ 
icism and suspicion. They make a cult of self-defense or 
take refuge in false reports and hearsay. Few will face the 
situation honestly and with humble intellectual alertness. 
This is still the narrow road which will not entice the many 
who travel the easy highroad of irresponsibility. The first 
task in securing responsible human beings is to strip the 
irresponsible of their alibis. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


30 

These alibis are of three main varieties. The individual 
absolves himself of obligation and blames social condi¬ 
tions, or the mass of men, or God, for the state of affairs. 
Let us consider first those alibis whereby the individual 
transfers his responsibility to God. The Puritan in the 
United States thirsted after responsibility as the hart pant- 
eth after the water brooks. His theology, heavily loaded 
with the doctrine of predestination, working back of his 
moral determination to govern himself, gave him some¬ 
thing of a messianic trend of mind. It was his passion for 
self-government, however, and not his predestinarian the¬ 
ology which made him responsible. Men of weaker fiber 
found it easy to interpret the doctrine of predestination in 
a way that relieved them of all responsibility. Thus a cer¬ 
tain Chicago minister opposed revivals on the ground that 
a certain number of men were going to be saved whatever 
they did or failed to do, and the rest would be lost anyway; 
so why bother? In my boyhood the minister of our Pres¬ 
byterian church always discounted the public-mindedness 
of the Unitarian editor of our local paper, a Mr. Hayward. 
“ Old Hayward,” he used to say, “ has to be good; he doesn’t 
believe in Christ.” Some time ago a notable sermon was 
preached from a Chicago pulpit on the general theme of 
civic reform. There were three kinds of cities, the pastor 
said. One was the City of Lust, the predatory city in which 
the ruling forces extorted riches from a suffering public. 
The second was the City of Rational Reform, struggling to 
bring in by human effort a regime in which human welfare 
would be paramount — a city of good homes, good streets, 
parks and civic centers. But its future, the pastor said, 
seemed very problematical; and even should it be attained 
it would be a City of Pride. He then directed our thought 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 31 

to a third city, the Holy City which Jehovah would some 
day hang upon our municipal Christmas tree if we would 
wait in faith. The audience voted for the third city since 
no effort seemed necessary for its realization. 

The second class of alibis, by which the individual trans¬ 
fers his responsibility to the mass of men, commonly takes 
the form of “ Everybody’s doing it.” This is the formula 
by which the tax dodger salves his conscience, by which 
the average citizen builds up his faith in major pressure 
groups. If enough people can be organized in pressure 
groups to attain our desires we are quite certain that our 
desires are right. “ It is good policy ” is another form of 
the same alibi. “ Everybody ” believes in reliance upon 
force, justifies the building of larger and better battleships. 
Thus we hand over to the mob obligations which belong 
to the individual. 

Then there is the alibi of claiming special privilege. We 
drive down the street asserting that we have a friend at 
court and so can disregard the traffic light. Our father is 
a political big shot. We are a member of such and such 
a club and carry a certain kind of insurance. We belong to 
this preferred class or that chosen people. So we need not 
obey the regulations; those are for common men. We re¬ 
move ourselves from the realm of moral obligation. We 
transfer our responsibility to those who allow us to be a 
member of the privileged class. 

Superficial interpretation of the findings of science pro¬ 
vides a specious alibi. We stretch the theory of economic 
determinism to cover all of life, and assert that climate or 
soil or some cosmic accident is responsible for all the ills 
of mankind. Some time ago I read a brochure which ar¬ 
gued that the sense of responsibility depends entirely on 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


32 

the quality and amount of sunlight. Too much sunlight 
accompanied by a high altitude, the writer said, generates 
irresponsibility, and he cited the bad behavior of Colorado 
high school children as proof. This kind of half-truth is 
made to order for the seeker of alibis. Again, scientists 
maintain that man is to a great degree the product of the 
combination of topography, sunlight and rainfall which 
determine the yield of agriculture and hence have a bear¬ 
ing on birth and death rates, health and longevity. Cer¬ 
tain of the scientists point to drouth, flood and desert as 
physical determinants by which man can be overwhelmed. 
However, even the desert can be transformed by irriga¬ 
tion canals and frost can be fought with smudge pots. 
Anyone who looks at a map of the United States of a hun¬ 
dred years ago sees large areas called the “ Great American 
Desert.” What has become of that desert? Both the Mal¬ 
thusian doctrine and the doctrine of economic determin¬ 
ism must be severely modified in view of man’s ability to 
modify nature. 

Another type of alibi is the affirmation of a petty moral 
conviction with such vehemence that it completely occu¬ 
pies the moral horizon and leaves no room for a sense of 
responsibility in other spheres. We lay the burdens we 
ought to carry on the dead shoulders of our ancestors. We 
say that the old virtues are good enough for us and we re¬ 
fuse to investigate their applicability to new situations. Or 
we magnify a minor virtue and exalt petty examples. An 
evangelist recently praised Dillinger because he did not 
smoke or drink. That preacher obscured for his audience 
the fact that Dillinger robbed and murdered all over the 
Mississippi valley. Those commit the same sin who are 
so dazzled by the virtues of hard work, frugality and thrift 
that they fail to see that large sections of our population 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY 33 

live by owning and others do not have a chance to work 
or save. Not wholly unrelated to these is the man who as¬ 
serts that because he is smart enough to do so he is at lib¬ 
erty to play tricks on the public. Caveat emptor, “ Let 
the buyer beware,” has long been the trader’s motto. The 
great lawyer or banker who outwits the law by violating its 
spirit and declares that the public can have no complaint 
if he makes use of the cleverness nature has given him, has 
a conscience no better than the trader’s. 

Now it is a fact that the nature of the social order has a 
bearing on the character of its members. It may encourage 
individuals to take responsibility or discourage them from 
doing so. The sense of responsibility grows by exercise. 
Opportunity to be responsible will, over a term of years, 
affect our capacity to be responsible, and lack of such op¬ 
portunity will cause that capacity to shrivel up. What 
kind of order we belong to is in the first place a matter of 
accident. But whatever the nature of that order, we must 
not use it to manufacture alibis for our failure to act re¬ 
sponsibly. We excuse our neglect to protest against abuses 
by saying that censorship hinders freedom of speech. We 
discover that we cannot market a good product because 
there is no demand for it, that we cannot pay good wages 
because the general wage-level will not permit us to do so. 
There is a degree of truth in all these alibis. But in the 
main they only obscure our obligation to create a society 
in which we can manifest good behavior. In other words, 
we are responsible for creating a social order in which we 
can be responsible. 

The conviction that we must create such an order is the 
first step in creating responsible people. The second is to 
open up to the individual the legitimate resources of re¬ 
sponsible living; that is, a belief that the order of the uni- 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


34 

verse is such that it demands responsible living and moral 
decision; that this basic order provides a standard for hu¬ 
man conduct; and that human behavior can be organized 
through human agencies. 

Let me illustrate this statement in terms of the life of 
Cecil Rhodes. William T. Stead thus expounds Rhodes’ 
philosophy of life. The statement appeals to our sense of 
humor, but it illustrates our point: 

Rhodes began by assuming that there was a fifty per cent 
chance a God existed. Take it a God did exist. What would 
this God want of man? 

It was a question Rhodes was prepared to answer. God 
would want man not only to look like him, but to act like him. 
Man, therefore, had to find out what God was doing, and do 
the same. 

What was God doing? Darwin had said it. God was per¬ 
fecting the race through natural selection and the weeding out 
of the unfit. It remained merely for man to follow this lead 
and God’s will was done. 

The eyes of Rhodes were after God. He looked to see what, 
in this*process of selection and elimination, God had achieved. 
Which, among all the people, had he brought to flower? 

With all modesty, Rhodes could not help admitting that it 
was the English-speaking peoples that followed the highest 
ideal of justice, liberty and peace: the people of Great Britain, 
her dominions, and America. 

The conclusion was clear. If Rhodes wished to please and 
follow God, he had, in whatever way he could, to promote the 
unity and extend the influence of the English-speaking race. 
To himself, personally, he allotted the task of Africa. 6 

In 1877, spending the long vacation in Kimberley, 
Rhodes composed a document which, many years later, he 
sent to Stead: 


RESPONSIBLE LIVING IN A DEMOCRACY' 


35 

“ It often strikes a man/’ says the document, grappling still, 
in the worrying Rhodes way, with his Ruskin-Darwin-Aristotle 
theme, " to inquire what is the chief good in life. To one the 
thought comes that it is a happy marriage, to another great 
wealth, to a third travel, and so on, and as each seizes the idea, 
he more or less works for its attainment for the rest of his exist¬ 
ence. To myself, thinking over the same question, the wash 
came to make myself useful to my country. ... I contend 
that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the 
world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race. I con¬ 
tend that every acre added to our territory prorides for the 
birth of more of the English race, w T ho otherwise would not be 
brought into existence. Added to which the absorption of the 
greater portion of the w'orld under our rule simply means the 
end of all w r ars.” 

And here and now he decides that he will work “ for the fur¬ 
therance of the British empire, for the bringing of the whole 
civilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the 
United States, for the making of the Anglo-Saxon race into one 
empire. What a dream! But yet it is probable! It is pos¬ 
sible! " 7 

Now analysis of this statement reveals that it contains a 
belief as to what God is doing in history: God is working 
for the survival of the fittest, and the agent through which 
he works is the British empire. This assumption issues in 
two further ideas: a philosophy of life and the choice of a 
vocation on the basis of w T hich Rhodes criticizes his own 
behavior and that of others and plans a future outcome. 
Rhodes’ notion that God is tvorking for the survival of the 
fittest and calls upon the English race to populate as much 
of the world as possible is of course fantastic, but the per¬ 
ception on w T hich it is founded is sound. Responsible liv¬ 
ing must be grounded in a philosophy of life which has 
also a cosmic and a social reference. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


36 

Man’s resources for responsible living then can be classi¬ 
fied under three heads. First are all those considerations 
which come out of his reading of the divine drama. If he 
believes that the nature of reality is such as to encourage 
him in the pilgrimage toward spiritual maturity he will 
work with confidence and assurance. Second is what man 
thinks of himself and what others think of him. We climb 
with others the ladder of responsible living. We seek spir¬ 
itual maturity for others and we associate with those who 
encourage it in us. There is no greater delusion than the 
delusion of the self-made man. Man does not make him¬ 
self. He shares with others a belief to which both can 
contribute and which makes them both. 

The third resource for responsible living is the com¬ 
munity which gives the individual opportunity to be re¬ 
sponsible. Responsible living is in a real sense the prod¬ 
uct of the habitual taking of responsibility in situations 
which demand it. People who, for a long time, are de¬ 
nied the opportunity of making free choices in social con¬ 
duct gradually lose the capacity to do so. Only as we are 
challenged by a social order which believes in freedom can 
we really become responsible. 

NOTES 

1 Fletcher Dobyns, The Underworld of American Politics (Los An¬ 
geles: Author, 1932), p. sii. 

2 See Richard E. Byrd, Alone (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938). 

3 Henry Barnard, Eagle Forgotten: The Life of John Peter Altgeld 
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1938), p. 217. 

4 Ibid., p. 214. 

s Ibid., p. 386. (Roosevelt denied that he made this statement.) 

s Cited by Sarah Gertrude Millin, Rhodes (London: Chatto & Windus, 
1936) > P- 67. 

7 Ibid. 


How the American People Became Irresponsible 

The coming of a democratic society awaits the coming 
of people who want to make choices, take responsibility 
and seek fellowship. You cannot have responsible people 
unless you are willing to create a society in which they can 
be responsible. On the whole, as things now stand de¬ 
mocracy seems to be holding on to God and freedom and 
neglecting responsibility and common welfare, while to¬ 
talitarian societies are holding on to responsibility and 
common welfare and neglecting God and freedom. The 
question is whether, while maintaining God and freedom 
— the religious values which are necessary to spiritual ma¬ 
turity — democracy can move on to a needed emphasis on 
responsibility and common welfare in a world-wide society. 

The American social conscience began as a theocracy in 
a village. That theocracy gave us our first responsible liv¬ 
ing and that village our first concept of common welfare. 
In this theocratic experiment there are germ ideas which 
will be useful in our tumultuous modern search for new 
definitions of responsibility and new concepts of common 
welfare. 

Puritanism offered to those early New England colo¬ 
nists participation in the final act of a drama of divine re¬ 
demption. It profoundly believed that the appearance of 
Jesus Christ constituted the greatest event in human his- 

37 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


38 

tory. Its ethics were biblical, and they were definite 
enough to struggle for supremacy in a world of competing 
ideas. It founded in the western hemisphere a new com¬ 
monwealth based on the Word of God and designed to save 
men. Puritanism believed in the organization of com¬ 
munities on what it conceived as a divinely revealed plan. 
It believed that God was the redeemer of persons and 
communities. And this is the abiding essence of its reli¬ 
gious social message. 

In early American life, religion, neighborliness, and the 
economic and political arrangements were coextensive in 
their acknowledged spheres of influence and interpene¬ 
trating in their relationship to one another. At that time 
there existed what I call responsible living or, if you will, 
Christian public-mindedness. Responsible living always 
has this double rootage. It roots in what men think of 
themselves and their fellows, and it requires an appropri¬ 
ate constellation of vocations and communities through 
which what they think of themselves can find expression. 
A stable society is one in which there are people who want 
what they ought to want, and also communities in which 
the people who want what they ought to want can get what 
they want. 

Cotton Mather saw the New World commonwealth as a 
part of the divine drama of the redemption of humanity. 
Boston, the metropolis of that commonwealth, was neces¬ 
sarily important. Mather held that God was a redeemer 
of persons and of peoples (corporate communities), and in 
his famous address, “ The History of Boston Related and 
Improved,” he based a whole code of civic-mindedness for 
Boston on his doctrine of a redeeming God who was re¬ 
deeming Boston as well as the persons who live in Boston. 
Sin was disloyalty and righteousness was loyalty to that re- 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 39 

deeming God. After reciting what God has done for Bos¬ 
ton, Mather says: 

And now will the Justices of the town set themselves to con¬ 
sider, How they may help to suppress all growing vices among 
us? 

Will the Constables of the town set themselves to consider. 
How they may help to prevent all evil orders among us? 

There are some who have the eye of the town so much upon 
them, that the very name of Townsmen is that by which they 
are distinguished. Sirs, will you also consider how to help the 
affairs of the town, so as that all things may go well among us? 

Moreover, may not School-Masters do much to instill prin¬ 
ciples of religion and civility, as well as other points of good 
education, into the children of the town? Only let the town 
well encourage its well-deserving school-masters. 

There are some officers; but concerning all, there are these 
two things to be desired: First, it is to be desired that such offi¬ 
cers as are chosen among us, may be chosen in the fear of God. 
May none but pious and prudent men, and such as love the 
town, be chosen to serve it. 

And, secondly, it is to be desired that officers of several 
sorts would often come together for consultation. Each of the 
sorts by themselves, may they often come together to consult. 
“ What shall we do to serve the town in those interests which 
are committed unto our charge? ” 

Oh! what a deplorable thing will it be for persons entrusted 
with talents (your opportunities to serve the town are so many 
talents!) and they never seriously consider, “ What good shall 
I do with my talents in the place where God hath stationed 
me? ” 

And will the representatives of the town be considered 
among the rest, as entrusted with some singular advantages for 
our help? The Lord give you understanding in all things! 

God help the town to manifest all that Piety which a town 
so helped of him is obliged unto! 1 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


40 

The Puritan theocracy so carefully expounded by 
Mather broke down. But the idea lived on in simple 
churches, in schoolhouses and colleges, among preachers 
and teachers who used the Bible and John Locke to prove 
that a good state is good only when it exists for the well¬ 
being of the people; that a good government is a covenant 
between men and no government can remain good with¬ 
out the consent of the people; that there is a powerful good 
God in whose name men have the right to defy all oppres¬ 
sion; that there are a law of nature and a law of revelation 
which give a point of reference from which to defy man¬ 
made law. 


Alexis de Tocqueville was neither preacher nor teacher, 
but his sociological theory of responsible living, simply 
and delightfully set forth in Democracy in America , fol¬ 
lows the line laid out by the theocrats. In this volume, 
which appeared a little over a hundred years ago — in 
1835 to be exact — De Tocqueville says: 

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious; 
there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian 
religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than 
in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and 
of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is 
most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation 
of the earth. 

I have remarked that the members of the American clergy in 
general, without even excepting those who do not admit reli¬ 
gious liberty, are all in favor of civil freedom; but they do not 
support any particular political system. They keep aloof from 
parties and from public affairs. In the United States religion 
exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 41 

of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community, 
and by regulating domestic life it regulates the state. 

I do not question that the great austerity of manners which 
is observable in the United States arises, in the first instance, 
from religious faith. Religion is often unable to restrain man 
from the numberless temptations of fortune; nor can it check 
that passion for gain which every incident of his life contributes 
to arouse, but its influence over the mind of woman is supreme, 
and women are the protectors of morals. 2 

Thus, as De Tocqueville sees it, responsible living roots 
first of all in a responsible person as the unit of a responsi¬ 
ble society. This responsible individual he finds in the 
American pioneer who has temporarily taken up his resi¬ 
dence in the wilderness. He is equipped with a Bible, an 
ax and a newspaper. He is acquainted with the past, cu¬ 
rious about the future and ever ready to argue about the 
present. 

The second unit of responsible living De Tocqueville 
finds in the American family: 

There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of 
marriage is so much respected as in America, or where conjugal 
happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated. In Europe 
almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregu¬ 
larities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and 
legitimate pleasures of home, is to contract a taste for excesses, 
a restlessness of heart, and the evil of fluctuating desires. 

Agitated by the tumultuous passions which frequently dis¬ 
turb his dwelling, the European is galled by the obedience 
which the legislative powers of the state exact. But when the 
American retires from the turmoil of public life to the bosom 
of his family, he finds in it the image of order and of peace. 
There his pleasures are simple and natural, his joys are inno¬ 
cent and calm; and as he finds that an orderly life is the surest 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


42 

path to happiness, he accustoms himself without difficulty to 
moderate his opinions as well as his tastes. 

Whilst the European endeavors to forget his domestic trou¬ 
bles by agitating society, the American derives from his own 
home that love of order which he afterwards carries with him 
into public affairs. 8 

De Tocqueville then speaks of the democratic owner¬ 
ship of property as the next safeguard of responsible living 
in the United States. This democratic ownership, he says, 
is insured by the law which provides that the big landed 
estates be divided equally among all the children at the 
time of the owner’s death. 

When the legislator has regulated the law of inheritance, he 
may rest from his labor. The machine once put in motion 
will go on for ages, and advance, as if self-guided, toward a 
given point. When framed in a particular manner, this law 
unites, draws together, and vests property and power in a few 
hands: its tendency is clearly aristocratic. On opposite prin¬ 
ciples its action is still more rapid; it divides, distributes, and 
disperses both property and power. Alarmed by the rapidity 
of its progress, those who despair of arresting its motion en¬ 
deavor to obstruct it by difficulties and impediments; they 
vainly seek to counteract its effect by contrary efforts; but it 
gradually reduces or destroys every obstacle, until by its in¬ 
cessant activity the bulwarks of the influence of wealth are 
ground down to the fine and shifting sand which is the basis of 
democracy. When the law of inheritance permits, still more 
when it decrees, the equal division of a father’s property among 
all his children, its effects are of two kinds: it is important to 
distinguish them from each other, although they tend to the 
same end. 

In virtue of the law of partible inheritance, the death of 
every proprietor brings about a kind of revolution in property; 
not only do his possessions change hands, but their very nature 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 43 

is altered, since they are parcelled into shares, which become 
smaller and smaller at each division. This is the direct and, 
as it were, the physical effect of the law. It follows then, that 
in countries where equality of inheritance is established by 
law, property, and especially landed property, must have a 
tendency to perpetual diminution. The effects, however, of 
such legislation would only be perceptible after a lapse of time, 
if the law was abandoned to its own working; for supposing the 
family to consist of two children (and in a country peopled 
as France is the average number is not above three), these chil¬ 
dren, sharing among them the fortune of both parents, would 
not be poorer than their father or mother. 4 

The next citadel of democracy is the township: 

Townships are to liberty what primary schools are to science; 
they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to 
use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of 
free government, but without the spirit of municipal institu¬ 
tions it cannot have the spirit of liberty. 

The American attaches himself to his home as the moun¬ 
taineer clings to his hills. 

The native of New England is attached to his township be¬ 
cause it is independent and free. His cooperation in its affairs 
insures his attachment to its interest; the well-being it affords 
him secures his affection; and its welfare is the aim of his am¬ 
bition and of his future exertions; he takes a part in every oc¬ 
currence in the place; he practices the art of government in 
the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those 
forms which can alone insure the steady progress of liberty, he 
imbibes their spirit, he acquires a taste for order, comprehends 
the union or the balance of powers and collects clear practical 
notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights. 5 

In the early period of American democracy, then, re¬ 
sponsible living rooted first in man’s sublime picture of 
himself as a part of the divine plan of the universe, in his 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


44 

religion which made him humble and socially responsible. 
It rooted also in a set of mutually supporting, simple po¬ 
litical and economic vocations which gave abundant op¬ 
portunity for the exercise of the divine calling. Religion 
trained men to want what they ought to want, and the so¬ 
cial order gave them an opportunity for realizing those 
wants. Men spoke easily of justice and discussed all the 
virtues and vices as important phases of life. Ethics had 
not yet become an outlawed mental discipline. 

To put it more briefly still: if you had been a member 
of one of those communities you, along with others, would 
have carried on the simple activities involved in home pro¬ 
duction and neighborhood consumption. The lawyer, the 
baker, the candlestick-maker, labored in an economy tem¬ 
pered by religion and neighborliness and a sense of civic 
duty. The shoemaker took care not to make a bad pair 
of shoes, because he expected to meet on the street the 
next day the man who was wearing the shoes. The farmer 
took pains not to sell too many rotten eggs, because he ex¬ 
pected to see at church the next Sunday the man who 
bought the eggs. The politically inclined citizen took 
thought about the laws he favored, because he expected 
to have his acts reviewed at the next town meeting. The 
religion which controlled manners controlled the public 
order also, because the spheres of manners, economy and 
politics were practically coextensive. 

The village grew up. The village post road became an 
international highway. The age of homespun became the 
age of high-powered production in factory and on farm. 
The democratic economy of simple, useful labor became 
an autocratically owned system of corporations financed 
out of a highly centralized, privately owned economic or- 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 45 

der. But the ethics neither of democracy nor of Chris¬ 
tianity grew up; they were content to remain in the vil¬ 
lage stage. 

Yet it would be unfair to say that the adherents of Chris¬ 
tian democratic ethics did not attempt to deal with the new 
economic situation. In the period between 1840 and 1850 
the Owenites, the Associationists and the New England 
Transcendentalists all faced bravely the question of the 
ethics and organization of property, as their forebears in the 
period between 1700 and 1800 had faced the question of 
the ethics and organization of the state. As a result of their 
labors they could point to the democratization of land- 
holding, the increasing freedom for women and freedom 
for slaves. But the Civil War was too much for them. It 
focused the attention of the nation on one issue and oblit¬ 
erated all the others, at least temporarily. After the Civil 
War the Republican party, which had been organized as a 
free-soil party for the democratization of landholding and 
the winning of more privileges for labor, was captured by 
the great industrialists, who made it the instrument of in¬ 
creasing their power. The social idealism of a Channing, 
a Parker and a Horace Greeley was largely forgotten, both 
by the holders of power and by the people. 

In tracing the failure of the ethics of Christianity and 
democracy to escape from the village stage, we must first 
of all record the disintegration of the dream of the divine 
redemptive drama. Let us admit that it had to disin¬ 
tegrate. The legalistic, Bible-centered, upper-class con¬ 
trolled world of Cotton Mather had to break up. When 
Benjamin Franklin organized his Hellfire Club, Cotton 
Mather’s world of responsible living began to fall to pieces. 
When he wrote his Road to Wealth he documented the be- 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


46 

ginning of American Babbitry. God, for Franklin, be¬ 
came a great aid to success but not the inspirer of humility. 
From the standpoint of administration the separation of 
church from government was necessary but it resulted in 
making religion a private matter and interest in it more or 
less optional. Not to be able to discuss questions of com¬ 
merce and politics was a sign of weakness, but ethics and 
religion were discussed as we might discuss the hobbies in¬ 
dulged in by a few. 

Science in the meantime came to the forefront as the im¬ 
portant phase of culture. The scientist was answering the 
question which men who were controlling continents 
wanted to have answered. He taught the techniques nec¬ 
essary in getting on — how to beat your competitor, not 
how to treat him. He implemented equally the predatory 
and the pious. Colleges with great laboratories which 
taught the skills of science supplanted colleges which 
taught the values that could motivate the will. Moreover, 
science brought with it an ethical theory which was very 
dear to the man who worshiped the “ God of Getting-on.” 
That theory was Mr. Darwin’s doctrine of the survival of 
the fittest. 


Another blow to public-minded thinking and living 
came with the abandonment of the township as a unit of 
social and political life and the arrival of the large city. 
East of the Hudson, America was settled community-end 
first. West of the Hudson, except where the New England 
tradition was strongest, the newcomer settled without re¬ 
gard to the community. The town meeting disappeared. 
Gradually there developed the big city with its mass- 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 47 

minded population dominated by the metropolitan news¬ 
paper and the urban politician. Urban political machin¬ 
ery was something to be captured by propaganda in the 
interest of power. No recession in American ethical stand¬ 
ards ever equaled the shift from the town meeting, which 
purposed to modify and socialize the struggle for power, to 
the urban society whose political machinery is regarded as 
a tool to be captured by men who desire power. 

Great cities are essentially alike in being, as a high au¬ 
thority has called them, aggregations of separate self-cen¬ 
tered units with no common purpose. Chicago will serve 
as an example. Chicago, it has been said, does not know 
why it exists; it has no soul. Some of its perversions have 
been dramatic enough to attract world attention. Chicago 
was shocked when A 1 Capone offered to be a good gangster 
if he were allowed the exclusive rights in the South Side 
beer racket. It was shocked by the Insull crash. It was 
shocked to find that its treasurer was four hundred thou¬ 
sand dollars short in his accounts — which four hundred 
thousand dollars, he jovially reported, he had lent to vari¬ 
ous political friends for trifling purposes. It was more re¬ 
cently shocked when the county assessor revealed that the 
wealthier citizens had annually hidden almost five hun¬ 
dred million dollars’ worth of their personal property 
from the eyes of the collector of the personal property tax. 
It is now shocked by the fact that it has a blighted area cov¬ 
ering at least forty square miles, the accumulated uncol¬ 
lectible tax deficit of which amounts to three hundred mil¬ 
lion dollars. 

Nothing, however, could be further from true insight 
into the real nature of Chicago’s perversions than to attrib¬ 
ute them to personal failings on the part of individuals. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


48 

No more futile attitude could be imagined than that 
which assumes that the people of Chicago could make great 
moral progress by eliminating a few much dramatized in¬ 
dividuals. The perversion is moral, but it is also organic, 
and to a large extent it is shared by all the citizens. A new 
standard of success has had right of way in this modern city. 
The best business has been that which made the most 
money. As Mr. Insull declared, his business was to make 
money. Wanting to make money, Mr. Insull had to have 
certain kinds of help — for instance, lawyers. His law¬ 
yers came from a profession which held aloft high stand¬ 
ards of public-mindedness. Few people would contend 
that lawyers such as these, who have helped big business 
achieve its objectives, have been true to their own voca¬ 
tional standard. The perversion of business by the profit 
motive has dragged down with it the great profession of 
the law. Lawyers are employed by great corporations to 
help the corporation achieve its purposes. 

The perversion of business carried with it also the per¬ 
version of the press. The State street merchants and the 
La Salle street bankers wield a mighty influence over the 
policies of the metropolitan papers. Pressure is con¬ 
sciously and unconsciously exercised. Many newspaper 
men have high standards but the newspapers of the metro¬ 
politan area reflect the metropolitan point of view. A 
young representative of the Associated Press recently drew 
up the following indictment: 

The press is inaccurate; it misquotes persons interviewed; it 
deliberately fakes, makes improper sacrifices to speed and is 
oblivious to significant news in more remote fields. 

Much truth to which the public is entitled is suppressed; 
news is distorted and colored with editorial opinion; by selec- 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 49 

tion and emphasis it is made to conform to the newspaper’s 
bias. 

Commercialism has dulled the newspaper’s interest in higher 
things; “ impersonal ” journalism lacks courage; the institu¬ 
tional press is bound by capitalistic sympathies. 

The press is unfairly partisan in politics and in other mat¬ 
ters; it maintains a “ blacklist,” and worships certain “ sacred 
cows ” (favored corporations). 

Some newspapers invade privacy; they are textbooks of 
crime; scandal and sex stories are printed solely to sell the 
papers. 

The atmosphere of a newspaper office is tainted by duplicity; 
they print what they do not believe. 

The newspaper employs anonymity to evade personal re¬ 
sponsibility; it does not perform its duties as a common carrier 
of information; good journalism protects bad journalism. 

The newspaper is suspicious of anything new in government 
and hidebound in its conservatism. 

Sensationalism distorts the news in most papers; the signifi¬ 
cance of news is less regarded than its human interest. 

The real interest in the press is money-grabbing; its advocacy 
of improvements is limited to those favored by commercial 
interests. 6 

Along with this perversion of the press goes inevitably 
the perversion of politics. Business men say that business 
is for the sake of business. The politician naturally de¬ 
clares that politics is for the sake of the politician. “ Bob 
Sweitzer was the best vote-getter in the Democratic party.” 
So says the evening paper in writing the story of the 
county treasurer who came up with the four hundred thou¬ 
sand dollar shortage previously mentioned. But what does 
vote-getting in Chicago mean? To a great extent it means 
ability to pander to the selfish prejudices of the largest 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


50 

group of specialized interests. These interests may be and 
often are just the people in the ordinary precinct and ward 
who want employment. They may be the interests of ra¬ 
cial groups who hunt in racial packs for city advantages. 
They may be the big public utilities. Being a vote-getter 
means being able to offer to these various groups of privi¬ 
lege-seekers some kind of selfish advantage which will cause 
them to deliver their votes on election day. 

It has recently been said that all election policies are de¬ 
termined by people whose votes are bought and paid for by 
some kind of concession which requires of those who take 
part in the deal absolute blindness to considerations of 
public-mindedness. Mr. Insull, desiring to achieve his 
purposes as head of the “ Insull empire,” not only made 
enormous contributions to the campaign funds of Chicago 
and Illinois politicians, but granted special opportunities 
in his stock deals to the city’s political bosses. His perver¬ 
sion was not essentially different from that of the ward- 
heeler who appeals to his friends to vote for a certain poli¬ 
tician because the politician, if elected, will provide jobs 
for them. 

With corrupt politics has come the gang. Our chief au¬ 
thority on racketeering has this to say about gangs and 
gangsters: 

Five distinct but interdependent elements comprise the struc¬ 
ture of any racket. These are: (1) business men; (2) leaders 
of organized labor; (3) politicians; (4) criminals; (5) lawyers. 

Racketeering, in short, is a combination of business, labor 
unionism, politics, lawyers and the criminal underworld, the 
purpose of which is exploitation of commerce and the public 
through circumscribing the right to work and do business. 

Accepting this as the definition of racketeering let us exam- 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 51 

ine each unit of the racket structure and see what each hopes 
to derive from participation in it. 

The business man seeks to create for himself and a favored 
few a monopoly in his particular field of service or trade, em¬ 
barrassing his competitors, maintaining an arbitrary price for 
his commodity or service, even seeking to dictate enactment 
and application of laws that govern his business. 

The leader of organized labor who betrays his trust and 
lends himself to a racket seeks first a monopoly of control over 
the workmen engaged in a given trade. This enables him to 
keep his treasury more full and to manipulate his main forces 
to the advantage of his co-conspirators and to the disadvantage 
of business men who dare to assert independence of the racket. 

The politician by paralyzing the hand of the law is, of 
course, looking to campaign contributors, organization work 
and votes at election time and frequently also to participation 
in the profits of the conspiracy. 

The criminal underworld finds lucrative employment to 
bomb, to commit arson, to slug, maim and kill, to terrorize an 
entire community into staying away from the polls at election 
time, and to fraudulent voting and terroristic practices at the 
polls, and latterly to control racketeering in its entirety. 

The lawyer guides and protects the racketeers in the matter 
of counsel, before the courts, in the realm of politics, and often 
he is to be found exercising the powers of an actual officer of 
the racket union or association. It is true that he is paid large 
fees or salaries for his services but he is or should be grounded 
in a tradition of ethical conduct stretching the length of the 
recorded memory of man. Yet we find a certain type of lawyer 
the most important cog in the machinery of crime. He has 
twisted and distorted the law to suit the purposes of a criminal 
clientele, subverting the dignity of habeas corpus, making the 
“ continuance ” in criminal trials anathema to complainants 
and a solace to criminals, devising the clever legal instruments 
that constitute the charters of rackets, in this way providing 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


52 

a respectable facade to fool the public. Any facilities of the 
legal profession of discipline for such members seem to have 
atrophied long ago. 7 

Along with the perversion of these major elements in 
society goes the perversion of the schools. In a democratic 
country, school funds are likely to be large and administra¬ 
tive positions lucrative. Our chief authority on education 
thus describes the situation in the Chicago school system: 

With the exception of a few short intervals, the board of edu¬ 
cation of this city has been for at least twenty-five years the tool 
of the dominant political party. City Hall influence ordinarily 
has not invaded the educational branch of the system but has 
frequently invaded the business affairs for the purpose of 
spoils. 8 

The churches have not escaped the general corruption. 
It would be nice to be able to say that the churches exist 
as oases in a desert of public evil; it is not true. Churches 
drift with the various social groups which maintain them. 
They live in the midst of these social groups, they stabilize 
them, but it is the rare church which can rise above the 
ethics of self-preservation to some kind of public-minded- 
ness which thinks in terms of the larger welfare. 


This perversion of the functions of the city is but an 
aspect of the larger perversion which misconceives the 
function of the city with reference to the rest of the nation. 
The city has frequently been looked upon as a social ulti¬ 
mate which operates entirely under laws of its own genius, 
without regard to the rest of society. But what is a city? 
It is the place where certain functions of national life 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 53 

come together in great aggregations. The city is just one- 
third of the national process. It is the place where the 
money-lender, the manufacturer, the trader and the profes¬ 
sional man exist side by side, not for themselves but mani¬ 
festly in order to play a part in a national process, two- 
thirds of which is outside the city. When towns were 
simple, it was easy to say and believe that the town ought to 
be a service center to the surrounding country, but in the 
great mass organization of the modern city this original 
functional relationship is entirely obscured. The city as 
a whole is terribly and exclusively interested in its own 
growth and development. It asks no ultimate questions 
about its relationship to all those national functions which 
exist outside it. 

I do not believe that the average city man harbors antipa¬ 
thies toward his rural compatriots. Some, like Mencken, 
may use nasty words and refer to the farmer as a yokel and 
a peasant. Some have forgotten that agriculture exists 
and are irritated when reminded of the fact. But the av¬ 
erage city man merely builds an impenetrable wall about 
himself by attributing to himself urban-mindedness. No¬ 
body knows what urban-mindedness is, but whatever it is 
the urban man thinks he has it and behind it he hides and 
hopes to defy analysis. But let us see whether this urban- 
mindedness — or urbanization — is not susceptible to be¬ 
ing reduced to its essential elements. What do I mean 
when I use the term “ urbanization ”? 

Urbanization is the way in which that part of our popu¬ 
lation who live in cities think and act in their capacity as 
lenders of money. They want what they call “ sound 
money,” which means that debt-paying is an unqualified 
obligation. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


54 

Urbanization is the way in which that part of our popu¬ 
lation who live in cities think and act in their capacities as 
buyers of raw material for manufacture and sellers of man¬ 
ufactured products. They want protective tariffs for them¬ 
selves but urge the farmer never to adopt a political 
remedy for an economic disease. 

Urbanization is the way in which that part of our popu¬ 
lation who live in cities act in their capacity as wage earn¬ 
ers. They fight inflation, which lowers the buying power 
of their dollar, and they fight a rise in the price of food. 
Urbanization, in brief, is a wild growth in the body social. 
If it is not checked it will kill the body. 


The spiritual heir of the Christian democrats who 
founded this nation faces a dilemma. The modern Chris¬ 
tian has a Christian conscience which believes in love and 
mutual aid. His ethic is sound. He clings, in theory, to 
the ideas of responsibility and common welfare. But he is 
unable to act upon that ethic, for he has developed moral 
energy for organizing only a small phase of life. Modern 
political and economic energy, however, equipped with 
science, has given him a world which extends beyond the 
borders of his city and of his nation, and is organized on 
the theory of the survival of the fittest. 

When the theocracy of the days of homespun and the 
village began to fail several alternative paths were opened 
up. One group took the road of evangelism and began 
to explore the inner recesses of the heart. Presently they 
found themselves on the path of otherworldliness and be¬ 
gan to dynamite the social order with the doctrine of the 
second coming of Christ. This doctrine shot religion into 


HOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BECAME IRRESPONSIBLE 55 

the sky. In its social expression it built orphanages and 
houses of refuge. 

Another group followed the rationalists. They allied 
the doctrines of human rights and of the divine right of 
property and became the fathers of American Babbitry. 
God, for them, became a great help in the acquiring of 
wealth. This doctrine shot religion into the ground. In 
its social expression it displayed enthusiasm for those in¬ 
stitutions which helped the individual make good in his 
own name. 

A third road was laid out by William E. Channing, The¬ 
odore Parker and Horace Bushnell, who sought to recon¬ 
stitute the American dream in terms of a social order which 
had railroad trains and factories but retained the spirit of 
the community and its sense of personal relationship. 
They wanted to keep religion on earth and make science 
its servant, not its master. 

But the road of Channing, Parker and Bushnell has 
proved to be harder to build and the jungle into which it 
led far more impenetrable than was at first suspected. It 
is not just the jungle of the modern city; it is the jungle of 
a whole civilization built around the principles of survival 
of the fittest and the struggle for power. There are those 
who think that that road cannot be built and they are turn¬ 
ing back to the first way. They are content with a religion 
which deals with the crises of the inner life and in various 
ways are trying to find relief in some form of divine inter¬ 
vention. That solution, of course, does not affect society 
as a whole. The second road, that of the individualists, is 
choked by the debris of war and financial debacle. 

We must turn back to the third road. Slow as is the proc¬ 
ess, that road must be built. Man has the right to rely on 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


56 

God for help but God does not relieve man of the necessity 
of building the road. We must recapture our sense of a 
constant written into the cosmic structure which has sig¬ 
nificance for what we think of ourselves and of our fellows. 

But while recovering this awareness of meaning, we must 
not neglect that other rootage of public-mindedness, the 
appropriate constellation of vocations and communities in 
which what we think of ourselves and our fellows can find 
appropriate and satisfying expression. We must create the 
democratic community in which we can be responsible, 
and we must extend that sense of community into the pub¬ 
lic relationships of life. 


NOTES 

1 Cotton Mather, “ The History of Boston Related and Improved,” 
Old South Leaflets (gen. ser., Boston, 1896), I, 97. 

2 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Colonial 
Press, 1899), pp. 308-9. 

3 Ibid., p. 309. 

4 Ibid., pp. 35-36. 

6 Ibid. 

6 From a report by a student in one of the author’s classes. 

7 H. B. Hostetter, “ The Rising Tide of Racketeering,” an address de¬ 
livered before a “ Rethinking Chicago ” meeting and incorporated into 
Rethinking Chicago (a mimeographed document in the Department of 
Social Ethics, Chicago Theological Seminary), p. 55. 

s Charles H. Judd, “ How Are the Children of Chicago to be Edu¬ 
cated? ” Rethinking Chicago, p. 88. 


Democracy’s Competitors 

Democracy makes certain philosophic assumptions, on 
which it bases its political theory and its attitude toward 
religion. In a recent article in the Political Science Quar¬ 
terly Professor Charles E. Merriam of the University of 
Chicago defines these assumptions as: (1) The essential 
dignity of all men and the importance of protecting and 
cultivating personality primarily on a fraternal rather than 
on a differential basis; (2) a constant trend in human af¬ 
fairs toward the perfectibility of mankind; (3) the fact 
that the gains of commonwealths are essentially mass gains 
and should be diffused through the mass by whom they 
were created as rapidly and as fairly as possible; (4) the 
desirability of popular control in the last analysis over 
basic questions of policy and direction with recognized 
procedures for the formulation of such policies and their 
execution; (5) confidence in the possibility of conscious 
social change accomplished by consent rather than by vio¬ 
lence. 1 

In relation to religion democracy has been closely as¬ 
sociated with Protestantism. It has demonstrated a reli¬ 
gious respect for the individual and has maintained free¬ 
dom of worship. It has left the church free to discover 
and determine that which is worthy of supreme devotion. 
It thinks of church, school and state as exercising a fellow¬ 
ship of functions, but concedes to none of them an exclu- 

57 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


58 

sive right to organize the human will. In matters of social 
change democracy believes in supremacy of truth, educa¬ 
tion, popular vote and parliamentary action. As between 
its various agencies, such as religion, education, industry 
and government, democracy insists on separation, freedom 
and unity through cooperation. 

To sum up, democracy is characterized by an emphasis 
on the importance of the individual and of the various 
functional groups. Unity comes not at the beginning of 
the process but at the end, through cooperation. Social 
change must be brought about through persuasion, not by 
force. Though it stresses the importance of a shared wel¬ 
fare, democracy has not hesitated to allow freedom of in¬ 
itiative despite the fact that this has involved a high degree 
of competition; it believes in keeping society open at the 
bottom and at the top. Democracy is that kind of society 
which, in its assumptions, structure and habits, hopes to 
leave people when it is through with them more mature 
ethically and spiritually than when it found them. 

Thus the ultimate basis of democracy is moral. The 
cries of despair that rise from within the democratic ranks 
focus attention on the moral ideals which lie at the root of 
the system. 

Democracy’s competitors are at the door. They have 
been able to advance so far because they have taken up two 
of democracy’s forgotten words — responsibility and com¬ 
mon welfare. To be sure these competitors renounce God, 
they ignore the fact that there can be no real responsibility 
without freedom, and they are infatuated with the idea of 
the state. Nevertheless, the fact remains that they have at 
least attempted to solve the problem of an organic society. 

Those of us who live in an unchallenged democracy find 


democracy’s competitors 


59 

it difficult to understand the system of which we are a part. 
A young student once remarked: “ Understanding democ¬ 
racy for an American is like a bee making honey; it sticks 
to his legs and he can’t see it.” But by looking carefully 
at democracy’s great present competitors we may arrive, 
through contrast, at a better understanding of our own 
system. 

Every system, whether it be fascism or communism, de¬ 
mocracy or feudalism, is characterized by certain persistent 
factors on the basis of which it can be analyzed and under¬ 
stood. We can ask of each system certain great questions 
through which, as through windows, we can examine its 
qualities. These are the questions: 

1. Around what values does this system organize? 

2. Where are the originating sources of these values? 

3. What are the ways of social change advocated by this 
system? 

4. What social and economic arrangement between the 
major functions — religion, education, industry and state 
— is provided? 

5. What basic religious ideas are held and how are these 
ideas provided for in religious institutions? 

Let us focus attention on democracy, represented by the 
United States, democratic collectivism by Denmark and 
Scandinavia, fascism by Italy, national socialism by Ger¬ 
many, and communism by Russia, and ask each our ques¬ 
tions. 

If we ask, What are the basic values? the answers are: 

Democracy: The individual, the right of private initiative, 
private judgment and private property. 


6o 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


Democratic Collectivism: The individual and the group. 

National Socialism: The Volk and its racial welfare. 

Fascism: The state and national supremacy. 

Communism: The proletariat mass and the welfare of the 
proletariat. 

If we ask, What are the originating sources of values? 
the answers are: 

Democracy: Every man. 

Democratic Collectivism: The individual and the group. 

National Socialism: The race; the elite. 

Fascism: The whole state speaking through the elite. 

Communism: The proletariat mass. 

If we ask, What are the ways of social change and social 
control advocated by the systems? the answers are: 

Democracy: Supremacy of truth, education, popular vote and 
parliamentary action. 

Democratic Collectivism: Freedom for truth and culture, co¬ 
operative collectivism; state action as product of parliamentary 
procedure. 

National Socialism: Volk welfare supreme over truth; first 
emphasis on securing of power; rule through propaganda. 

Fascism: Religious truth as a separate entity; power abides 
in state rule by state propaganda. 

Communism: Power first, truth second; rule by power and 
propaganda. 

If we ask, What are the ways of social arrangement be¬ 
tween the major functions — religion, education, industry 
and government? the answers are: 

Democracy: Laissez faire in theory, opportunity for the 
entrepreneur, actual special privilege for the money-lender, 
trader and manufacturer. 


democracy’s competitors 


61 


Democratic Collectivism: Large growth of cooperative move¬ 
ment; much of private industry still remains; state enters busi¬ 
ness at point where private industry is least adequate. 

National Socialism: National planning through economic 
dictatorship; responsible leadership of entrepreneur; much 
government ownership; agricultural and middle classes privi¬ 
leged. 

Fascism: National planning through dictatorship; state con¬ 
trol of capitalist system; most business privately owned. 

Communism: Abolition of capitalist system, state ownership 
of means of production and distribution; control largely in in¬ 
terest of urban proletariat, middle class eliminated; agriculture 
regimented. 

If we ask. What are the basic religious ideas? the answers 
are; 

Democracy: Religious respect for individual; largely Prot¬ 
estant in faith; freedom of worship maintained. 

Democratic Collectivism: Church still free to discover and 
determine that which is worthy of supreme devotion; church, 
school and state maintain a fellowship of functions. 

National Socialism: Religion to revert to tribal stage, church 
to be regimented in interest of Volk and state; state assumes 
many functions of church. 

Fascism: Church and state exist in separated and unrelated 
functions. 

Communism: Religion identified as instrument of slavery; 
state takes over church function of determining that which is 
worthy of supreme devotion; church abolished. 

The contrast which these systems afford is overwhelm¬ 
ing in its significance. The ethical issues threaten to cre¬ 
ate a new epoch. For three hundred years responsibility 
has been placed on the individual. Now, in a large part 


62 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


of world society, responsibility is not on the individual but 
on the group. Here is a fundamental shift. But such 
shifts in social ideas and methods have their source in some 
need, else they could not be maintained for more than a 
very short time. The opponents of democracy have some¬ 
thing to say for themselves. 


Draw a line between the Scandinavian countries on the 
west and Russia on the east, let it pass between Denmark 
and Germany, and follow down to the Mediterranean sea 
between France and Germany. On the west side of this 
line will lie most of the countries which have had experi¬ 
ence with and still profess belief in the democratic method. 
On its east will be the countries which have undertaken the 
solution of social problems through resort to some kind of 
dictatorship. The line between the countries which are 
so distinguished will probably become sharper as the days 
go on. 

If one were to approach intelligent citizens on the west 
side of this line and ask them their convictions about social 
methods, one would receive answers somewhat as follows: 

We believe (they would say) that a democracy which 
trusts the people to cooperate in self-government is worth 
fighting for. We have no desire to be members of a to¬ 
talitarian state. 

We believe that education which respects individual 
judgment and does not turn a university into a group of 
“ yes-men ” is worth fighting for. We view with apprehen¬ 
sion the shift of the center of educational control from 
standards which are indigenous to educational institutions 
to standards based on the short-time objectives of a racial 


democracy’s competitors 63 

group or of the state. The dictator who surrounds him¬ 
self with educators who tell him what he wants to know 
will ultimately die of ignorance. We believe that our ed¬ 
ucational institutions render the best service to the com¬ 
mon good in an environment which recognizes freedom of 
research and the right of private judgment. We will main¬ 
tain a social order in which there is willingness to grant 
this freedom because we desire to have the service of free 
investigators rather than of intellectual slaves. 

We believe that a church which can stand over against 
the state and look the state in the face and criticize it in 
the name of the highest good is worth fighting for. Reli¬ 
gious institutions are charged with the task of interpreting 
that which is worthy of supreme devotion. Freedom to do 
this without first making obeisance to any of the secondary 
values of race, class or nation, is an indispensable condition 
of social health. 

We worship a God before whose will race, class and na¬ 
tion must walk humbly. This God is superior to every 
Volk God. The career of the God we worship is marked 
by successive triumphs over the false absolutes of empire 
and race. In early Christianity the battle against emperor 
worship was fought once and for all, and in early Judaism 
our God ceased to be the God of a preferred people. He 
cannot now be made to serve the purpose of either a class 
or a race. They must serve him. 

We believe that the state cannot possibly be the final 
teacher of morals. By its very definition the state is an 
institution based on power; its objectives must be local 
and provincial. When it subordinates religion to itself it 
sacrifices its best friend because it forfeits its most disin¬ 
terested critic. Likewise the state needs the free criticism 


64 THIS nation under god 

of the scientist and the educator. It can trust itself with 
power only as it disciplines itself through free criticism. 

To all this those on the eastern side of the line would 
probably reply: 

It is true that Western democracy has given to the voca¬ 
tions, especially those which flourish in the city — money- 
lending, trading and manufacturing — their greatest op¬ 
portunity. They have grown strong, but they have grown 
at the expense of the laborers in the factory and on the 
farm. The benefits of democracy are one-sided and very 
limited. Democracy has given to the professions their 
great opportunity. They have each developed a laudable 
autonomy. But democracy has not achieved an organic so¬ 
ciety. Vocational prejudice is almost as acute as class prej¬ 
udice and race prejudice. The democratic countries are 
atomistic in their development and unjust in their distri¬ 
bution of rewards. 

It is true (those on the east side of the line would say) 
that education has achieved a remarkable development but 
this education is practically helpless in the face of great 
national crises. It does not deal with those issues which 
are most acute in national life. The universities are filled 
with loafers to whom education is an opportunity to delve 
in harmless specialties which have no practical value for 
suffering humanity. Society must act. It must plan. It 
must do something about the truth which it possesses. 
The unlimited accumulation of volumes on library shelves 
does not justify the vast expenditures on education. Edu¬ 
cation has not created public-minded citizens. 

Those on the east side would continue: The claim that 
the West worships a God of love in a free church is sheer 
sentimentality. In the first place, the church is not free. 


democracy’s competitors 65 

It is proving itself subservient to the groups who have paid 
its bills. It has not lifted the ideals of the people to high 
service in a world of public evil. It has been provincial, 
interested in self-preservation, filled with competitive 
strife. It has operated on the low level of the ethics of self- 
preservation. It has taught private morality in a world of 
public evil. In the second place, the West has not wor¬ 
shiped a God of love. The God of the West has been a 
god of power. No nations have more thoroughly followed 
his bidding than the democratic nations which have ruth¬ 
lessly penetrated to the uttermost parts of the earth in 
search of trade. The claim that a God of love is the cen¬ 
tral idea in Western ethics is hypocrisy. It is well to be 
rid of such hypocrisy, and this requires that we recognize 
the sentimentalism and insincerity of all such claims to 
universality. 

Thus, while disclaiming any loyalty to the ideals of de¬ 
mocracy, those on the east side of the line would claim that 
they are creating an organic society in which there is some 
attempt to solve the problems which democracy has not yet 
solved. A dictatorship can at least bring order out of chaos. 
It can plan a totalitarian state which has the machinery 
for dealing with those large-scale emotions which gather 
around regional provincialism and class struggle and 
plague the steps of every Western democratic statesman. 


Before this panorama of battling world forces, Western 
society stands compelled to make some great decisions. In 
order that it may make them intelligently, it must first 
reach a better understanding of the past and strive as best 
it can to envisage the issues involved in various alterna- 


66 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


tives. The considerations which enter into these great de¬ 
cisions will not be altogether theoretical ones. Ten mil¬ 
lion unemployed in one nation, with the right kind of 
leader, may constitute an argument stronger than abstract 
theory. One thing is certain — humanity is no longer con¬ 
fined to just one way out. Hard-pressed in the midst of a 
social order which is not providing a satisfactory type of 
life, Western society now stands at a crossroads where there 
are multiple alternatives. The remainder of this chapter 
will be given to a short attempt to explore the road by 
which we have come and an effort to make clear the is¬ 
sues with which we are confronted. 

The thirteenth century has often been called the great¬ 
est century in Western social experience. All social forces 
seemed at that time to be going in the same direction and 
there was something of a sense of unity of idea and pur¬ 
pose. The West was an organic society. With the growth 
of the towns and the development of a trader economy this 
sense of organic unity gave way to that set of ideas which 
have been grouped under the general concept of democ¬ 
racy. For the past three hundred years we have been em¬ 
phasizing the rights and responsibilities of the individual. 
Men began to explore human society almost entirely from 
this point of view. They developed certain great slogans 
— the right of private judgment, the right of free speech, 
freedom of the press, freedom in education, the right of ev¬ 
ery religious group to organize as it saw fit, private initia¬ 
tive in business and the right of private property. These 
principles came to be considered as firmly established; 
they had been won at great cost and seemed to mark out 
the pathway of all future progress. 

But gradually society has taken another turn. Once 


democracy’s competitors 


67 

more it is beginning to explore the interdependence of life. 
We are coming to see that the great values of life cannot 
be gained by individuals who work each for himself. We 
cannot get married by ourselves, we cannot play baseball 
by ourselves, we cannot get food by ourselves. We must 
have cooperative agreements, with their more or less com¬ 
plex regulations. Today collective relationships are more 
important to us than individual rights and responsibilities. 
All the various functions of society which have struggled 
for autonomy are now facing the necessity of deciding how 
much of their autonomy they must give up in order to 
establish satisfactory relationships with other functions 
which are equally necessary to the social body. 

Four great experiments are abroad in the world, each of 
which is characterized by some modification of the princi¬ 
ple of autonomy in the vocations. If the Reformation pe¬ 
riod could be characterized as a period when each of the 
vocations sought to go its separate way, the present time 
can be characterized as one in which the vocations are seek¬ 
ing one another for the purpose of effecting an organic in¬ 
terrelationship. The critical question concerns the nature 
of that relationship. Over against the values of democracy, 
new movements are stressing the right of the state to co¬ 
ordinate all functions. In economic matters collective con¬ 
trol is placed above private control. Education and reli¬ 
gion are regimented to make the state more secure. All 
these new experiments are offering to society some new col¬ 
lective arrangement and they are dealing roughly with the 
hard-won values and virtues which democracy defends. 

It is an interesting fact that the democracies are the first 
peoples who have ever on a large scale tried to carry on a 
working society without the help of some powerful idea 


68 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


which stood for the whole as over against the part. The 
Chinese have a fivefold social order. They tell us the 
scholar is first because he creates something out of nothing. 
Next to the scholar comes the farmer because he creates 
something out of the soil. Next to the farmer comes the 
mechanic because he creates something with his tools out 
of wood and iron. Below all these, they tell us, is the 
trader who simply exchanges products and creates noth¬ 
ing. Last of all, at the bottom of the list, comes the soldier 
because he only destroys. Whether you like this classifica¬ 
tion or not, it is a serious attempt to organize functions by 
awarding them relative places in a hierarchy which estab¬ 
lishes status as well as duty. 

If you turn to India you have the much discussed caste 
system. This again is an attempt to provide for national 
life an industrial regimentation. The Brahman, who is 
the religious and ethical teacher, worked out the system 
and naturally placed himself at the top. Next to the 
Brahman, Indian ideology places the soldier because he 
controls society by force of arms; he is to the social body 
what the arms and lungs are to the human body. Below 
the Brahman and the soldier come the merchants and farm¬ 
ers— those who do the heavy work of the body politic. 
They correspond to the hips and the legs of the human or¬ 
ganism. Last of all come the depressed or outcaste classes 
to whom is relegated the work which no one else wants to 
do. Whether you like it or not, such is the framework of 
the social structure in India. To each caste are assigned 
both privileges and duties. If you are an outcaste whose 
duty it is to clean out the latrines and skin the dead cattle, 
no one is going to take these duties away from you in time 
of unemployment. 


democracy’s competitors 


6 9 

In a similar way medieval Christianity came to terms 
with the needs of society. It had a caste system of its own 
which distributed privileges and responsibilities on a some¬ 
what different basis. Its controlling idea was that of the 
family, within which there were a personal relationship of 
loyalty and a property relationship of patrimonial propri¬ 
etorship. Society as a whole followed this pattern. At its 
head were a feudal lord and an officer of the clergy to whom 
obedience and loyalty were due. Responsibility in this pe¬ 
riod meant fidelity to those who were at the top. 

But presently something happened to the idea of com¬ 
munity and something happened also to the doctrine of 
responsibility. The various functions of society began to 
seek what they called autonomy; each attempted to set up 
in business for itself. Each individual and each group de¬ 
manded the right to determine what constituted its own 
welfare and to carry out its idea. The result of this em¬ 
phasis on the individual part was a failure to set up any¬ 
thing which stood for the whole. The total effect of the 
Protestant Reformation was the gradual freeing of society 
from the regimentation of callings organized by the Ro¬ 
man Catholic Church. Whether you tell the story from 
the economic, the political, the social or the ecclesiastical 
point of view, the outcome is the same; there gradually 
disappeared the idea of the organic whole to which the in¬ 
dividual part could be loyal. 

The society of the last three hundred years stemmed out 
of a period when the church was dominant over the profes¬ 
sions. The church appears as the dark background against 
which most of the now autonomous vocations have defined 
themselves, or as the adversary in the struggle of science to 
cast off the shackles of theology. 2 In their fight to throw 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


70 

off the domination of the church, the various professions 
and vocations made use of one or other of the various slo¬ 
gans of democracy — free speech, the rights of the indi¬ 
vidual, freedom of research, economic laissez faire. But 
important as was this doctrine of freedom, in the course of 
pursuing it society lost sight of a central concept which 
gives meaning and purpose to freedom. Of the necessity of 
some concept which stands for the whole and can come to 
terms with the part, there seems to be no question. 

Faced with the necessity of finding new social forms 
which will have regard for the common welfare, all the 
competitors of democracy are making use of the state. 
Some of them are using the techniques of religion to make 
the state the object of loyalty. With the glorification of 
the state has come a waning of interest in the individual 
and the smaller group. It is assumed that individuals can 
be propagandized into loyalty, and that the organization of 
highly propagandized populations into loyalty to the state 
is an adequate definition of responsibility. The fact that 
the responsibility must be voluntarily assumed is entirely 
ignored. 

The totalitarian state begins at the outer end of the 
process. It regiments from the top downward and from 
without inward. It coordinates all the more delicate 
phases of life, forces them into the molds which are neces¬ 
sary to the achievements of its totalitarian enthusiasms. 
Races are brutally treated, families are regimented, and the 
private world of religion and education is compelled to 
conform. Instead of being the expression of a rich inward 
life the state becomes the agent for crushing that life. 
That is why there is no function so desperately in need of 
criticism and of free agents of criticism as the political func- 


democracy’s competitors 


71 

tion. Political power is probably the toughest and the 
most ruthless of all man’s power activities. Our only safety 
lies in subjecting it to unending criticism. 

Now there is no reason why the state should not be not 
only the agent for the control and distribution of power 
but also the servant of welfare. There does not seem to be 
any other agency on the horizon which can do the big 
mass tasks which have to be done. The state can fight 
famine, poverty, disease, isolation and ignorance. It can 
control international tariffs, customs and currency rates. 
Just because it can do these things so well in a world which 
is just beginning to be conscious of the wide areas that 
must be discovered and conquered we may expect the state 
to be increasingly important. Especially in time of crisis 
men will turn to it. 


Just because the state is taking on these functions the 
problem of citizenship is now growing acute. Since we are 
dependent upon the state for so many new services, we 
must choose our forms of government and our governors 
with a new sense of their tremendous importance. The 
time has come for a new dedication of the people to the 
issues of citizenship. If the state is more and more to be 
the agent for accomplishing our social purposes, then the 
exercise of citizenship privileges through faithful and in¬ 
telligent use of suffrage becomes, next to home life, a cause 
worthy of our supreme devotion. 

The evil of totalitarianism does not lie in either little or 
much activity on the part of the state. The state’s activity, 
as such, must be judged on its own merits. We might eas¬ 
ily decide that a great deal of our common life is now to 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


72 

be organized from political centers. Of course, the tend¬ 
ency to transfer a larger and larger number of activities to 
the state tends to overamplify the function of the state and 
to create in it the assumptions of totalitarianism. If we do 
not want the state to take this role it would be better not to 
transfer too much power to it. 

The evil of totalitarianism lies in the transfer of respon¬ 
sibility from individuals and groups who can and ought to 
make decisions to some mythical center of responsibility 
in the state. Democracy, according to Adolf Hitler, wastes 
the statesman’s time in that it compels him to make “ the 
genius of his proposal comprehensible to a flock of silly 
sheep for the purpose of imploring their final consent.” It 
is in the assumption that the great masses of the people are 
a flock of silly sheep that the basic evil of totalitarianism 
lies. For the masses of the people to accept for themselves 
the role of silly sheep and to transfer their God-given vo¬ 
cation of responsible living to some mythical concept 
called the state which will relieve them of the task of dis¬ 
covering, defining and defending that which is worthy of 
supreme devotion — this is an evil which defeats all of life. 
It is a moral abdication on the part of people in favor of a 
political leader who will take responsibility for the totality 
of their lives. 

The opposite of totalitarianism is the religious assump¬ 
tion of the worth and dignity of human beings who, under 
God, feel the necessity of making decisions and of playing 
a role which is the exact opposite of that of silly sheep. 
Worship of God carries with it a principle of inward sta¬ 
bilization which releases for service all personal powers, 
which is the tonic and not the opiate of the people. For 
both the individual and the group the worship of God may 
be the beginning of the pilgrimage to spiritual maturity. 


democracy’s competitors 73 

Granted all that must be granted about the necessity of 
a more organic type of society, if that society must be at¬ 
tained at the cost of spiritual and moral creativity on the 
part of individuals it will be a bigger tragedy than all the 
failures which can now be chalked up against three hun¬ 
dred years of individualism. 


NOTES 

1 A summary, taken from the Federal Council Information Service, of 
an article by Charles E. Merriam in the Political Science Quarterly for 
October 1938. 

2 Cf. Andrew D. White, The History of the Warfare of Science with 
Theology in Christendom (New York, D. Appleton Co., 1896). 


Christianity and Democracy in the 
Primary Relationships of Life 

The native of New England is attached to his township be¬ 
cause it is independent and free; his cooperation in its affairs 
insures his attachment to its interest; the well-being it affords 
him secures his affection; and its welfare is the aim of his am¬ 
bition and of his future exertions: he takes a part in every oc¬ 
currence in the place; he practices the art of government in the 
small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those 
forms which can alone insure the steady progress of liberty; he 
imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order, comprehends 
the union or the balance of powers, and collects clear practical 
notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights. 1 

When De Tocqueville called attention to the family and 
the township as the communities in which men first 
learned responsible living, he was anticipating, by almost 
a century, the observation of the sociologist that communi¬ 
ties of primary contacts are the seeding ground of social 
ethics. The poet in his own way discerns that truth. His 
praise of the village is more than sentimentality, for he sees 
in the village the symbol of the primary group relation¬ 
ships which constitute the soil wherein religion and ethics 
root. His insight is a true one. Villages are the natural 
“ old folk’s homes ” of the nation, but it is not often rec¬ 
ognized that they are also the nurseries of the nation. 

The family, and the small community of village and 
74 


PRIMARY RELATIONSHIPS OF LIFE 75 

farm, are the nourishing home of responsible living for 
people who want to be responsible. There is nothing in¬ 
herent in these institutions which guarantees responsible 
living. They can be the places where people cause one an¬ 
other the most intense pain and most thoroughly exploit 
one another. But if the motives for responsible living are 
strong, the family and the small community become the 
first laboratories of citizenship. In the family individuals 
learn the significance of loyalty to something larger than 
themselves. The responsibility of the group is distributed 
among the members, each of whom achieves freedom only 
by discharging responsibly the functions assigned him. 

It is within the family that the mind first forms the im¬ 
ages which are basic to its later ideals. The fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood of man are concepts which root 
in family relationships. When people cease to live in fam¬ 
ilies these concepts will mean little or nothing to them. 

There are two possible readings of the development of 
the family from the days of tribalism down to the romantic 
family of democracy. The way one reads this history will 
determine somewhat his formula for the improvement of 
the family in the future. 

In the days of tribalism men bought, traded or stole their 
wives, who more often than not were merely means of in¬ 
creasing the political and economic prestige of the chief¬ 
tains. Where civilization grows, the tribal family is dis¬ 
placed by the patriarchal family. Here wives are not 
acquired by barter or theft; they are chosen by patriarchal 
arrangement. The young groom and bride seldom see 
each other prior to their wedding day, and after their mar¬ 
riage they go to live in the larger family among the aunts 
and uncles, the fathers and mothers and other members of 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


76 

the patriarchal household. Very little responsibility rests 
upon the young people in regard either to the choice of a 
mate or to the carrying on of their duties as members of the 
great household. 

Higher up on the ladder of civilization appears the fam¬ 
ily of convention in which marriage is determined by mat¬ 
ters of class. There is more freedom of choice on the part 
of marriage partners but considerations which grow out of 
the necessity of marrying inside of and for the sake of the 
state or class are important. Recently a young king set the 
whole world agog because he refused to marry inside his 
class. His empire shook with revolutionary convulsions 
because he disrupted those ordinary procedures which gov¬ 
ern the conventional marriage. 

Where conditions warrant, the conventional marriage 
gives way to the romantic marriage to which is attached an 
economic determinism. This kind of marriage is de¬ 
scribed most adequately by Bushnell in his “ Age of Home¬ 
spun.” 2 He frankly recognizes that the young man 
chooses his lass because she knows how to spin, because she 
is frugal, because she is capable of fulfilling the numerous 
economic functions which were centered in the pioneer 
home. 

The final step in this evolutionary series is the romantic 
marriage pure and simple. It has its roots in the free as¬ 
sociation of boys and girls in a coeducational public school 
system or in some other system which permits abundant 
opportunity for courtship. That courtship is highly com¬ 
petitive. It is open to both young men and young women. 
Its boundaries are no longer inside the neighborhood but 
are extended by ease of communication and transporta¬ 
tion. The young people go to live in a small apartment of 


i 


PRIMARY RELATIONSHIPS OF LIFE 77 

their own, take full responsibility for all decisions and are 
expected to be sufficient company for each other. No 
larger family adds its resources of sociability. No other 
family in the world starts out with so large a burden of self- 
support. Many of the functions and services which in the 
days of homespun centered in the home are performed by 
the factory, provided the groom — and often the bride — 
can earn sufficient money to buy them. 

Now there are two ways of reading what has happened. 
To some it seems to have been a continuous pilgrimage in 
the direction of freedom. They sum up the story with the 
phrase, “ From plunder to courtship.” In their view man¬ 
kind has advanced in a succession of liberations of one part 
of the family from another, in a continuous enlargement of 
the principle of liberty and consent. Hence there is but 
one line of progress for the future. If the democratic fam¬ 
ily is to be improved it must move in the direction of more 
and more liberation for its members. There are psychia¬ 
trists who would have us believe that once disease is cura¬ 
ble, conception preventable, divorce obtainable and God 
impossible, we will be on the road to complete happiness 
in marriage. Here the formula is an ever increasing em¬ 
phasis upon the sacredness of the individual and the im¬ 
portance of human rights. “ Give me liberty or give me 
death ” is its intelligent expression in political association. 

There is, however, another reading of the history of mar¬ 
riage which holds that the improvement in the relationship 
of men and women arises from the gradual extension of 
the role of the man and the woman in a more richly con¬ 
ceived variety of relationships and corresponding respon¬ 
sibilities. Originally there was only one conceivable 
relationship between man and woman, and that was 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


78 

the sex relationship. Whatever men and women did 
they did inside of marriage. But in performing the func¬ 
tions demanded by family life men and women learned to 
behave in a variety of ways. New roles were opened up 
to women which required both freedom and responsibility 
for their realization. The employment of women in of¬ 
fices awaited the arrival of women and men who did not 
confuse the relationship of employees and employers with 
the relationship of husbands and wives. The nurses in In¬ 
dia are not making much progress because Indian public 
opinion has not succeeded in understanding that women 
in bedrooms can have any other function than that of 
wives. Coeducation was taboo for a long time because peo¬ 
ple assumed that young men and women in college halls 
always behaved as they did in ballrooms. Freedom of as¬ 
sociation between men and women has been through 
growth of the sense of responsibility and through the dis¬ 
covering and defining of roles which call for discrimina¬ 
tion as to function. 

We have advanced from the stage where people live by 
force and fear or by custom and rule to the phase where 
they live as interacting persons largely because we have be¬ 
come aware of these separate roles which can be defined 
and appreciated only by those who have imagination and 
who act not according to laws but on the basis of what is 
required if they are to fulfill the roles they have accepted. 
Freedom, then, is linked with responsibility and a sense of 
common welfare. 

For those who thus read the history of marriage, im¬ 
provement of the romantic marriage lies in another direc¬ 
tion, that of an increased spiritual maturity and ethical 
awareness on the part of all those participating in it. The 


PRIMARY RELATIONSHIPS OF LIFE 79 

romantic marriage will be improved by a new awareness of 
the meaning and purpose of the sex function in life. It 
will be improved by an awareness of what it means to be 
a person as husband or wife, as son or daughter. It will be 
improved by a new awareness of the public world to which 
the family is related on terms of interdependence. As it 
exists now, the romantic family is often the most selfish 
family in the world. It enjoys less reinforcement from 
other great motives, such as loyalty to tradition or country 
or class, than does any other family, and leaves the two part¬ 
ners with a deplorable poverty of interest. Yet the family 
which is aware of its dignity and responsibility will fight 
against any kind of totalitarian state. It will maintain its 
dignity in the face of intrusion from without. It will not 
shift the burden of training its children to publicly pro¬ 
vided substitutes for father and mother. It will not unnec¬ 
essarily abandon all the useful arts. To these attitudes it 
will add a new conviction of the importance of family life 
for the development of social codes which will make people 
believe that the building of families and the rearing of chil¬ 
dren are necessary forms of sacrifice. 

The future of the democratic family seems assured. No 
other institution in society shows any strong tendency to 
take over the family function. The more one sees of states 
the more he is satisfied that the extension of the ethics of 
the state into the circle of the family will be a calamity, 
whereas the extension of the ethics of the family into the 
circle of the state will work for social redemption. The 
democratic family has a real contribution to make to a na¬ 
tional culture. It will keep alive in society the deeply 
rooted values of affection and regard for the individual. 

There will be, of course, important functions for the 


8 o 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


state to perform. But essentially the family based on af¬ 
fection seems a permanent part of a good society, since the 
good society roots in the convictions of those who form 
families. The law of the state is force and the law of busi¬ 
ness is trade and profits; the law of the family is affection 
and compassion. Hence the family has a contribution to 
make to religion also. When we pray, “ Our Father who 
art in heaven,” we indicate that the basic principle of social 
organization is a family principle, one of generosity, of re¬ 
gard for weakness and of tenderness. These words would 
become a mere formula were we not continuously experi¬ 
encing fatherhood, brotherhood and the like within family 
relations. Down through the years Christianity has been 
sympathetic with the family. Out of the family it has 
drawn its great symbols. And in the family men have 
learned their greatest ethical lessons. But the lesson they 
have learned has not been one primarily of freedom but 
rather of freedom to be responsible. 

The family, however, is a small-scale community. In the 
village and in the township described by De Tocqueville, 
the same relationships obtain on a somewhat larger scale. 
Here also men experience both freedom and responsibil¬ 
ity, and cooperation is invited and rewarded. The town¬ 
ship is a comprehensible community. It permits practice 
of the art of government in matters which are not too great 
for the individual to accomplish successfully. And success¬ 
ful social experience in the smaller areas guarantees both 
preparation for and a willingness to attempt adventures in 
larger areas. 3 

But there are yet other values to be found in the face-to- 


PRIMARY RELATIONSHIPS OF LIFE 8l 

face communities. In the small community life is more 
plastic than in the great city. Richard Gregg, in a recent 
magazine article, 4 calls our attention to the “ logic of little¬ 
ness.” In expounding this idea he tells us that the small 
group has a flexibility which it loses as it becomes more 
ponderous. In large groups there is necessarily a subordi¬ 
nation of some to the organizing power of others. Nor is 
the chance for eliminating bad ideas as great in the large 
group as in the small. The small group, which calls upon 
all its members to participate, is much more favorable to 
that free interchange of ideas which makes for sane and 
healthy minds. 

Several years ago I wrote the following “ Code for a 
Small Community ” which presents in more concrete form 
the attitudes involved in successful primary relationships: 

I am one of the smaller communities of America. I am not 
Chicago and I am not New York. But people come here to 
exchange the goods of life. Some come here to sell produce 
and to buy clothing; some come to buy machinery; some come 
for pleasure; some come for borrowing and lending money; 
some come for education and some come for religion. Because 
I am a trade center, therefore I should seek to be a service 
center. 

I will respect myself. I will not indulge in self-pity because 
I am small. 

I will develop and conserve my resources. I will not fail to 
organize as I should but I will not waste my energy in useless 
organization. 

I will not encourage factional strife of any kind, religious, 
social or economic. Other communities may be able to endure 
factionalism but my resources are limited and they must be 
conserved. 

I am a thinking unit in America’s great republic which is 


82 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


ruled by public opinion, and I will endeavor to make my con¬ 
tribution to an intelligent public opinion. I will not know¬ 
ingly be ruled by ignorance nor prejudice. I will resent all 
attempts to fill my mind with propaganda as an insult not to 
be endured at the hands of those who try it. 

Because I am a community the most important fact about 
me is that I have a purpose and a spirit. I will encourage all 
those individuals and those groups who try to keep their spirit 
and purpose free from evil and full of righteousness and good 
will. 

I will recognize that probably the basic man in my commu¬ 
nity is a farmer, a gardener, a fisherman or a miner. Were it 
not for these people who man the industries, my community 
would not exist. I will try to prosper with them and not off 
them. 

I am a small community but I do not need to be isolated nor 
provincial; the goods of the world are mine, but the world 
expects me to provide as well as take. I will be worthy of the 
wholehearted devotion of my people because I offer them a 
chance to secure the abiding satisfactions of life. 

The characteristics of the small community which make 
it the natural home of responsible living and therefore the 
strategic place for the development of Christian responsi¬ 
ble living can be summed up as follows: 

Human relationships are simple. The struggle for 
power is simple and each member can be directly and con¬ 
cretely aware of the total welfare. 

Human formulas for the control of power are fairly defi¬ 
nite. Between man and woman there is the formula of the 
good family. Between people occupying contiguous ter¬ 
ritory there is the formula of the good neighbor. In busi¬ 
ness dealings there is the formula of the good workman 
and of business integrity. In discovering the right and 


PRIMARY RELATIONSHIPS OF LIFE 83 

wrong of doubtful cases there are the formulas of neigh¬ 
borly justice. 

The human situations are comprehensible and the mem¬ 
bers of the group can use their imaginations in contriving 
new formulas for adjustment. The mass problems of great 
populations are utterly bewildering to the individual, but 
in the simple situations of the small community people of 
good will can act and see the results of their action. There 
is the chance for investment of will power and purposive 
intelligence. Opportunities for selfless devotion and loy¬ 
alty are abundant. Neighbors meet together and help one 
another in times of economic need. There is the reward 
for public-minded service, a reward which expresses itself 
not in monetary compensation but in the good will and 
public approval of people in whose eyes a neighbor wishes 
to be a success. 

Now it is my contention that it is the loss of these char¬ 
acteristics, or failure to discover and develop them, which 
lies at the base of the irresponsible living in the more elab¬ 
orate and complex situations of modern life. It is true 
that institutions like the family and the village do not guar¬ 
antee responsible living. There is a certain illogic to lit¬ 
tleness which cannot be overlooked. There is a sense, how¬ 
ever, in which a world which has not been subjected to the 
cash nexus, where people are conscious of one another as 
persons, constitutes the best opportunity for a society of 
brotherly men. It is this world which is torn to pieces 
when men are moved about by the process of buying and 
selling in the cheapest or highest market without regard to 
what it does to the human fabric of society. Sir Henry 
Sumner Maine pointed this out with reference to the In¬ 
dian village after the industrial revolution had had its way 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


84 

in India . 5 Even with a highly industrialized country like 
the United States there is a fabric of life which is still im¬ 
mune to the law of the markets. If this immunity is lost, 
democracy will perish of the totalitarian plague which is 
spreading over the world. 


NOTES 

1 De Tocqueville, op. cit., pp. 67-68. 

2 Horace Bushnell, “ The Age of Homespun,” Work and Play (New 
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1864) , pp. 374-438. 

3 There is today a world-wide renaissance of interest in the family and 
the village. In India, “ village reconstruction ” is on the lips of every 
reformer and statesman. The ejido, according to Eyler N. Simpson ( The 
Ejido, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937), offers the basis for 
the reconstruction of Mexico. Walter A. Terpenning has written a book 
(Village and Open-Country Worlds, New York: Century Co., 1931) enu¬ 
merating the glories of the European village. 

4 Richard Gregg, “ Creative Group Fellowship,” Fellowship, Oct. 1938. 
s Henry Sumner Maine, Village Communities (New York: Henry Holt 

& Co., 1889), p. 192. 



Christianity and Democracy in the Public Order 

In his book Village Communities, Sir Henry Sumner 
Maine asks the question: “ What is the origin of the feeling 
that it is not creditable to drive a hard bargain with a near 
relative or friend? ” He answers: 

The feeling seems to me to bear the traces of the old notion 
that men united in natural groups do not deal with one an¬ 
other on principles of trade. All indications seem to me to 
point to the same conclusions: men united in those groups out 
of which modern society has grown do not trade together on 
what I may call for shortness “ commercial principles.” 

The general proposition which is the basis of political econ¬ 
omy made its first approach to truth under the old circum¬ 
stances which admitted of men meeting at arm’s length not as 
members of the same group but as strangers. Gradually the 
assumption of the right to get the best price has penetrated the 
interior of these groups but is never completely received so 
long as the bond of connection between man and man is as¬ 
sumed to be that of family or clan connection. The rule only 
triumphs when the primitive community is in ruins. 1 

The law of the markets then is the assumption that there 
are areas of life where men deal with one another not as 
friends nor as members of a family but on the basis of the 
cash nexus. “ As a professional man I refuse to be friends 
with my clients/’ So speaks an eminent practitioner. 
“ We do not speak to the people across the hall. We think 

85 


86 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


it small-townish to do so.” So the wife of an eminent pro¬ 
fessor at the University of Chicago describes life in a mod¬ 
ern apartment building. 

Interestingly enough, modern society has progressed be¬ 
cause it has been able to make certain discriminations. 
The practitioner evidently cannot treat his clients the way 
he treats the members of his own family. I cannot treat all 
the people in a department store the way I treat my closest 
friends. Nothing would be more foolish than for a man 
to try to greet all the people whom he meets on Michigan 
boulevard as he greets his friends in the village. Nor does 
Christian responsibility demand that he should do so. But 
Christian responsibility does demand that the various re¬ 
lationships of our complex modern society be subject to 
the law of a total comprehensible good. If I trade with 
people I must remember that the real object of trade is 
mutual advantage, not personal profit. If I am elected to 
political office I must remember that the object of office¬ 
holding is the welfare of the people, not personal prestige. 

This chapter will attempt to draw up an itemized bill of 
Christian particulars in the field of the secondary contacts 
of life. It is not an accident that the rise of the Calvinistic 
churches, the recognition that man can serve God in his vo¬ 
cation, and the growth of cities were concomitant. The 
city is the home of the vocations, and the high cost of civ¬ 
ilization in an increasingly urban world is the develop¬ 
ment of a high standard of public-mindedness in vocational 
groups. Calvinism stressed the idea that a man can ex¬ 
ercise his responsibility in the place where he finds him¬ 
self. Thus Cotton Mather designed an essay upon the 
good “ in a Personal Capacity or in a Relative. Then 
more particularly unto Magistrates, unto Ministers, unto 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 87 

Physicians, unto School-masters, unto wealthy Gentlemen 
and unto several sorts of Officers.” 2 

i. Responsibility on the Rural-Urban Highway 

There are in the United States approximately 7,300 farm 
neighborhoods and incorporated and unincorporated 
small communities having less than 2,500 population. 
They stand at one end of a rural-urban highway, at the 
other end of which is the large trade center. To be a dem¬ 
ocrat means to believe that there can be on this highway a 
relation of freedom, responsibility and regard for common 
welfare. 

The oldest conflict in the world is the conflict between 
the city and the hinterland. It is written all through the 
Old Testament that Hebrew justice was pounded out on 
the anvil of this struggle. Justice to the poor meant justice 
to the villager and the villager was the man who did the 
farming. Most of the achievements of Solomon had back 
of them conscript labor and a standing army organized to 
a large extent at the expense of a depressed rural class. Sol¬ 
omon turned over to Rehoboam a country seething with 
unrest. The peasants’ revolt against Rehoboam was a re¬ 
volt over taxes which Rehoboam promised would be as 
much heavier than his father’s as a man’s loins are thicker 
than his little finger. In Babylon, in Egypt, in Persia 
there were similar revolts against the cities, which in those 
early times were largely the strongholds of military and po¬ 
litical power. They were called “ consuming cities ” for 
they produced none of the necessities of life. 

But the modern city of the traders manufactures and 
produces, and its relationship with the hinterland is sup¬ 
posed to be one of fair exchange and mutual advantage. 


88 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


Today’s urban world needs the raw materials from forest 
and mine, and food from the farm. It needs the surplus 
population of the country. It needs also the market which 
the rural sections offer. And the country needs the prod¬ 
ucts which the city’s factories turn out, its banking and 
professional facilities and for lighter moments the variety 
and spice its amusement centers afford. The city has what 
the country needs and the country has what the city needs. 

Democracy’s formula for the interplay between the rural 
and urban worlds calls for freedom and cooperation in an 
interchange of services. But generally the place where 
those worlds meet becomes a battleground. In the market 
the farmer bargains with the city over the price of food. 
In the state legislature he struggles against urban forces 
over the question of the collection and expenditure of taxes. 
At the seat of the national government where he meets the 
trading, manufacturing and money-lending forces the is¬ 
sues have to do with customs, tariffs, currency rates and 
other forms of government participation in the national 
economic life. The ethical issues involved in this series of 
contacts are those of bargaining, the rights of producer, 
distributor and consumer in what is produced, the distri¬ 
bution and consumption of food, the mutual obligations 
of creditor and debtor, the stewardship of the land, the 
profit motive in business and the use of the state to pro¬ 
mote public welfare. Historically, the city has been more 
powerful than the country and has been able to get what 
it needs by forcible appropriation. It has scarcely recog¬ 
nized the fact that the farmer exercises a great stewardship 
of the land which he holds in trust to feed the hungry mul¬ 
titudes of the nonfarming population, nor has it realized 
that free cooperating farmers can make more food availa- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 89 

ble than farmers who are regimented either in a modern 
totalitarian state or under some ancient feudal regime. 

Democracy faces a hard task on the rural-urban highway. 
It must fight first of all for the right of the farmer to be re¬ 
sponsible. It must put into his hands power sufficient to 
enable him to resist exploiting forces from without. At 
the same time it must develop in him a sense of responsi¬ 
bility which will make him recognize that he is free only 
to be a servant of the common welfare. The opposite of 
a regimented farmer is not an individualistic farmer glory¬ 
ing in the private ownership of his land; it is a responsible 
farmer freely accepting the stewardship of land as an op¬ 
portunity for producing food for the city, not because he 
has to but because he wants to. 

But a sense of responsibility at the other end will be still 
harder to get. There is a tendency on the part of urban 
forces to assume that they are social ultimates. The urban 
consumer especially believes that he has a sort of divine 
right to cheap food, regardless of the conditions under 
which the food is produced. He fails to recognize that two- 
thirds of the price he pays at the store represents what 
the city dealers pay themselves after the food gets inside 
the city limits. More than that, the city man assumes a di¬ 
vine right to a standard of living which bears no reference 
to the living at the other end of the rural-urban highway. 

Even liberals who have espoused the cause of urban la¬ 
bor and declared that it had a right to orderly bargaining 
with capital have often turned their backs on the right of 
the farmer to a just price for the products of his labor. 
Jane Addams defended the right of union workers to 
proper hours and wages, but when the farmers went on 
strike said that for them to withhold food from the hungry 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


90 

millions of the city was one more evidence of their pro¬ 
vincialism. One of the tests of democracy will be its ability 
to include both rural and urban in a total picture of na¬ 
tional good. 

A vivid memory of my early life in Chicago is of a very 
good woman who called on the telephone and said, “ Dr. 
Bundesen says that if these farmers out here in the milk- 
shed go on strike it is likely to imperil the purity of our 
milk supply and endanger the lives of our children.’* I 
was stirred by her message. In the course of events, I was 
made chairman of a committee appointed to hold hearings 
in the milkshed and find out what the trouble was all 
about. I found one good woman with four children stand¬ 
ing at the telephone twenty consecutive hours directing the 
picket line of the farmers’ strike in southern Wisconsin. 
She wanted a better standard of life with less drudgery for 
herself and her family, and this seemed the only way to 
get it. 

Now here were two perfectly good women wanting le¬ 
gitimate things. Here was a simple process organized 
around a milk bottle, a process so full of turmoil that it 
was almost impossible for the participants to have really 
responsible thoughts about it. Thus far there has not been 
sufficient public-mindedness and social ingenuity to bring 
democracy along this rural-urban highway. 

Let me illustrate my point by an account of certain 
events relating to Chicago’s milk supply. There was a 
time when Chicago’s milk supply was a simple matter. 
The farmer with a little surplus milk sold the surplus to a 
neighbor who had not sufficient milk for his needs. The 
farmer who had the surplus saw to it that his milk was 
clean because he did not want to be called a dirty neighbor. 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER gi 

The neighbor who bought the milk did not pay too small 
a price because he did not want to be called a skinflint. 
And the small boy who delivered the milk behaved him¬ 
self because he knew he was watched from both ends of the 
process. 

And then, tradition has it, one morning Mrs. O’Leary’s 
cow kicked the lantern over and started a conflagration 
which consumed the city. And after the city had been re¬ 
built the city fathers made a law that from that time on no 
one would be allowed to keep a cow or a goat inside the 
city limits. Anyone who wanted to keep a cow or a goat 
had to move to Evanston or points beyond. So the citizens 
could no longer buy milk from their neighbors. It was de¬ 
livered by a stranger whom they knew only in his capacity 
as a deliverer of milk. 

Today that first farmer has become eighteen thousand 
farmers, that neighbor who purchased the milk has be¬ 
come three and a quarter million consumers, and that 
small boy has become eight thousand milk wagon drivers’ 
union men and one hundred and fifty distributors. And 
the process of supplying Chicago with milk has frequently 
been one of conflict — bitter conflict — strikes and lock¬ 
outs. Some of these one hundred and fifty distributors are 
financed from a central banking house in New York. (To¬ 
day four major corporations, financed from New York, con¬ 
trol a very large part of the dairy products of the nation.) 

Across one counter the corporation has bargained for 
the products of the farmer and across another counter it 
has bargained for labor. It has always been advantaged 
when there were three laboring men standing at the gate 
bidding for a job which required only one. It has always 
been advantaged when there have been five quarts of milk 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


92 

coming to a market which demanded only one. And the 
managers of these corporations have understood not only 
how to restrict competition for themselves; they have been 
equally adept at multiplying competition among the la¬ 
borers and among the farmers. 

One result of the corporations’ tactics is the large num¬ 
ber of desperately driven farmers on the great plains of the 
United States. During one of the milk strikes in Chicago 
the manager of perhaps the most important of the big dis¬ 
tributing companies told me: “ These farmers are foolish. 
They can’t control the market. There are twenty-two dif¬ 
ferent railroads coming into the city of Chicago. We have 
our glass-lined tank cars; we can bring in milk on every one 
of those railroads and we can bring it in from Oregon or 
from Texas. We have the situation completely in our con¬ 
trol. There is only one thing for the farmer to do and that 
is to beat his fellow farmer in competition.” 

And of course labor is in the same situation. There are 
eight thousand men in the milk wagon drivers’ union of 
Chicago. There are fifty thousand men who would like 
those jobs. The union has had to protect itself by every 
means in its power. And the gangster has long since seen 
that such a situation spells opportunity for him. Chicago 
is notorious for the extent to which gangsters have con¬ 
trolled its unions, but in the case of the milk wagon driv¬ 
ers’ union they met their match. 

Old Steve Sumner, who organized the milk wagon driv¬ 
ers’ union in Chicago, himself told me the story of a his¬ 
toric battle with the gangs — in 1932, about the time Chi¬ 
cago was beginning work for the Century of Progress 
exposition. One day Murray Humphrey, a representative 
of A1 Capone’s gang (for A1 himself was on his way to Alca- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 93 

traz), came into Steve’s office, saying, “ Steve, we want to 
put a man in this office.” 

Steve asked, “ What’s the matter, Murray, do you want 
a job? ” 

Humphrey replied, “ No, we want a man in this office, 
and for every wagon you’ve got on the streets of Chicago 
you will pay three dollars a week into our gang. We will 
guarantee you protection. We will guarantee that you 
have a monopoly on the jobs of the milk wagon drivers’ 
union in this city.” 

Steve Sumner answered him: “ Murray, I was the organ¬ 
izer of this union. I am eighty-three years old and if you 
get into this office you will get in over my dead body.” 

Murray shrugged his shoulders. “ Steve, there was a 
time when we didn’t use machine guns.” 

“ Murray, there was a time when we didn’t either,” 
Steve retorted. 

Murray left the office. The next day the president of 
the milk wagon drivers’ union was kidnaped, and it cost 
Steve Sumner fifty thousand dollars to get him released. 
Then the gang informed Steve Sumner that he was the 
next man on the spot. Steve’s answer to that was: “ Boys, 
this is going to be a war.” He laid his plans. The next 
Sunday he went to union headquarters and made an an¬ 
nouncement to the members. “ If we’re going to have a 
war,” he said, “ let’s make this a real war. Let’s make it 
such a war that the whole city will know what is happening 
in this devilish competitive game.” And he outlined his 
plans to them. 

So they told him to go ahead and set about fortifying 
the milk wagon drivers’ headquarters. He covered the win¬ 
dows with bullet-proof steel mesh. In the back of the 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


94 

assembly room he built a booth — something like the 
booth in the back of a movie theater — where he posted a 
man armed with a gun to keep guard over every office on 
the first floor of the building. He bullet-proofed the walls. 
He established a man with a machine gun across the street. 
He bought Mr. Insull’s old armored car (which Mr. Insull 
had no need of just then because he was in Greece) and the 
union officials went back and forth between home and 
headquarters in it. The newspapers caught the implica¬ 
tion of the union’s moves and played up the story. 

I saw Steve the next week. He said: “ Mr. Holt, I just 
saw old Fort Dearborn that they put up as a part of the 
Century of Progress celebration. Those boys back there 
didn’t know what trouble was. What they really ought to 
do is to take this contraption that we built here and put 
it alongside old Fort Dearborn and write over it all, ‘ A 
Century of Progress ’! ” 

Did Steve Sumner and his union have an opportunity to 
be public-minded? Did the farmers who kept any milk 
from coming into Chicago have an opportunity to be pub¬ 
lic-minded? No! Property-mindedness on the part of one 
group made class-mindedness on the part of the other two 
groups. That result was inevitable; there was no way of 
escaping it. Each group was exactly as public-minded as 
the other two, and so all were forced to forget the fact that 
the reason for supplying the city with milk was, after all, 
to save the health of little children. This story of the 
breakdown of public-mindedness in one industry illus¬ 
trates what has happened all along the rural-urban high¬ 
way. 

It would, however, be unfair to classify as evil-minded 
all the groups which participate in this process. It is not 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 95 

alone a matter of the will to be good. The original farm¬ 
ers’ organization took as its slogan: “ We will supply Chi¬ 
cago with pure milk, not because we have to but because 
we want to.” Here was corporate public-mindedness. 
Nor are all the companies that distribute milk in Chicago 
controlled by a New York banker’s demand for his five per 
cent. But it becomes increasingly clear that true public- 
mindedness cannot be achieved apart from an organization 
of producer, laborer, distributor and consumer which 
shifts the goal of the process from profit to public service. 

This does not necessarily mean that the City Hall should 
turn the business of supplying Chicago with food into a 
publicly owned utility. Probably nothing could be worse. 
Public ownership does not necessarily mean socialization. 
In South Africa the government owns the railroads and 
the steel mills and it is perfectly evident that this is simply 
one way in which the white population makes use of gov¬ 
ernment ownership to control the black population. Pub¬ 
lic ownership does not mean socialization until we know 
who controls the government. If the people of Chicago to¬ 
day were to vote on the price of milk as they vote on a 
streetcar franchise there is little doubt that the farmer 
would be worse off than he is at present. 

However, these considerations do not obscure the fact 
that some kind of relationship must be established which 
makes it safe for each group to surrender its present selfish 
and militant attitude in the confidence that it is enlisting 
for public service. Someone remarked that gang life will 
disappear from Chicago when the government steps in and 
actually performs the service which the gang, in a very self¬ 
ish way, offers to perform. It is true that a “ century of 
progress ” has resulted in a situation where all groups in 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


96 

society operate more like gangs than like public service 
agents. These gangs will not surrender until there is 
something representing the general welfare to which they 
can surrender. The war on the rural-urban highway will 
not end until all those little armies can rally around one 
flag. The problem of vocational and professional ethics 
is largely the problem of making it possible for these little 
conspiracies against the public to surrender to something 
which more thoroughly serves the public. 

2. Can the Professions be Centers of Public-Mindednessf 

There are five great professions which are older than the 
state: law, medicine, journalism, teaching and religion. 
They have maintained a high degree of professional disci¬ 
pline and have fought great battles for human welfare. 
To believe in democracy is to believe that these professions 
can keep their freedom without becoming conspiracies 
against the public. I hold that teachers know more about 
teaching than politicians can ever know, that journalists 
are justified in demanding freedom of the press because of 
the good results that freedom has yielded in the past. I 
believe that doctors know more about what makes for pub¬ 
lic health than any other group and I would fight for the 
separation of the church from the state and for the freedom 
of the clergy. But the fact remains that because of profes¬ 
sional pride and avarice, these great professions are not giv¬ 
ing to the public the service it has the right to demand. 
Democracy’s competitors are at the door and they are in 
no mood to wait for these groups to make up their minds to 
be centers of public service. Only a moral revolution in 
their own ranks can save the professions from regimenta¬ 
tion. State control and regimentation would undoubtedly 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 97 

be a calamity but unless the professions choose to be vol¬ 
untary centers of public-minded effort they will be regi¬ 
mented by the state. 

When Andrew D. White, in 1896, published his book, 
The History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in 
Christendom, he set up the Magna Charta of the various 
professions. Hitherto they had been dependent upon the¬ 
ology for their sanctions. One by one White told the sto¬ 
ries of how the various branches of science — geography, 
astronomy, anthropology, psychology, medicine — had 
fought their way free from the limitations placed upon 
them by the theologians. The tale of the physician who 
justified the use of anaesthetics in obstetrical operations by 
proving that, when Eve was taken from the body of Adam, 
God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, is a fair sample 
of the methods the learned professions had to use in their 
struggle against theological opposition. It is a story which 
is not creditable to theology. But one issue, and perhaps 
the most important, White neither raised nor answered: 
the question of what these learned professions were going 
to do with their newly found autonomy and prestige; 
whether they would be little conspiracies against the pub¬ 
lic or centers of public-minded service and public-minded 
thinking for a total welfare. This was a question religion 
had raised and had in its own way answered. But when 
the professions achieved autonomy too many of them 
ceased to ask it. 

The principle of autonomy has brought about the func¬ 
tional separation of education, medicine, law, journalism 
and the church. Each operates independently, with little 
or no regard to what any of the others is doing. Each is 
conscious only of its self-chosen goals and pursues them 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


98 

with an energy never before known in human history. Re¬ 
ligion itself, freed from association with the state and from 
other phases of social life, has probably more vigorous rep¬ 
resentation today than ever before. The churches in the 
United States at least are proud of their separation from the 
state. They are older than the state and they live in 
the voluntary loyalty of people. All these positive gains in 
the professions under the principle of autonomy it is nec¬ 
essary to record. 

But it is necessary to record the losses also. The great 
loss attending the professions’ achievement of autonomy 
is an increasing vagueness in any thought which stands for 
the whole of society as the church once stood in the Mid¬ 
dle Ages. Society has no center recognized as such by all 
its parts. Today the great self-conscious professional 
groups, ambitious for their prestige and power, contend 
stubbornly, each for its own vested interest, and fail ut¬ 
terly to think in a public-minded way of a total human 
welfare. Education is conducted not with a view to the 
whole man but rather for the glory of that particular frag¬ 
ment of culture which any department represents. The 
principle of freedom of the press is made to justify the 
newspaper’s behaving in a way that brings rewards to 
the newspaper but has slight regard for public welfare. 
And the professions indulge their jealousy of one another. 
There is not a great deal of race prejudice on a university 
campus but there is an enormous amount of interdepart¬ 
mental prejudice. Nor are the church and the clergy pub¬ 
lic-minded. Churches are perfectly willing to crucify com¬ 
munities on the cross of denominational glory. 

It is not surprising that of late, both within and without 
the professions, there has been a growing demand for rec- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 99 

ognition of a sense of community which will answer the 
question, What is the purpose and the end of all our au¬ 
tonomy? For what greater good do these self-conscious 
professional groups exist? Once again there is a reaching 
out for that larger thought which stands for society as a 
whole. Inside the professions the movement takes such 
form as the various dinner clubs whose slogan is, “ He prof¬ 
its most who serves best.” The ritual and the general emo¬ 
tional behavior of these groups make them nothing short of 
a layman’s religion which is capturing the loyalty of mil¬ 
lions of men who sit around dinner tables and listen to in¬ 
terminable speeches about the public welfare. Outside 
the professions there are movements which emphasize and 
symbolize the total welfare as the object of obligation on 
the part of professional groups. Men are asking questions 
about the health of all the people and are beginning to 
speak of socialized medicine. The community church has 
its advocates, and there is talk about the religion which is 
outside the church and not subject to the limitation of the 
old forms. Above everything else men are looking to the 
state as the new form of community which represents all 
of us. 

But is this sense of community to be forced down upon 
us from the top, or self-imposed and defined through pub¬ 
lic-minded thinking on the part of the various professional 
groups? Socialization is inevitable. But is it to be social¬ 
ization through compulsion or socialization through demo¬ 
cratic, ethical action? 

Nothing could be further from good policy in seeking to 
recover responsible living in the United States than to look 
to government regulation as a source of such living. Un¬ 
less there are large groups whose public-mindedness rests 


100 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


on a deeper foundation than government regulation there 
is little hope for freedom in the future. It would seem that 
if this foundation can be discovered anywhere it is in these 
great professional groups whose tradition of service runs 
far back in history and who have, in the United States, 
large resources for responsible living. The question we 
face, then, is whether or not professional consciousness can 
be a reliable source of public-mindedness. Can these ma¬ 
jor vocational groups — clergymen, teachers, lawyers, doc¬ 
tors and journalists — muster the attitudes which will en¬ 
able them to take the lead? These are issues which bring 
a sense of crisis to the individuals in the professions who 
must face them. There is a high road and a low road. We 
are moving in the direction of discovering these issues 
when we realize that, of every profession, there are ques¬ 
tions to be asked as to its control and purpose and that this 
control and purpose have significance for the wills of those 
who share in the vocation. Of every community of utility 
it is proper to ask. What useful purpose does it serve and 
do those who participate in it cooperate for the realization 
of that purpose? For instance, do those who are members 
of the legal profession seek to promote law and justice or 
have they focused their minds on the monetary returns 
from the vocation? Again, every vocation involves certain 
relationships among the people who carry it on. What is 
the social arrangement among these people? 

The attitudes which the professions must develop if they 
are to lead in the quest for responsible living are not 
wholly different from those which characterized individu¬ 
als in the simple face-to-face relationships of the small com¬ 
munity. They are, first, a sense of interdependence based 
on awareness of a total welfare; second, fairly definite for- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 101 

mulas for good and bad behavior in the various profes¬ 
sional groups; third, a system of recognition for good con¬ 
duct and condemnation of bad conduct; fourth, the 
continuous envisioning through the imagination of con¬ 
ceivable formulas for public-minded behavior. All these 
attitudes, be it noted, are based on moral insights. 

In the attempt to develop these attitudes there will be a 
minimum of reliance upon the state for the defining and 
defending of good conduct. A larger reliance will be 
placed upon the powers of the group spirit, informed and 
defined by great personalities in the various vocations who 
make excellence real and desirable. A sense of this ex¬ 
cellence will be kept alive by the celebration of great oc¬ 
casions when, by remembrance, recognition, ritual and 
codes, the group spirit will be directed along lines of pub- 
lic-mindedness. There will be schools for vocational train¬ 
ing which hand on the accumulated skills of the vocation 
but also seek to transfer the spirit of public-minded con¬ 
duct. These schools will be open only to persons care¬ 
fully chosen for their natural aptitude for the profession 
in question. 

In his description of the good physician Dr. Richard 
Cabot sums up the qualities of the public-minded profes¬ 
sional man. The good physician, he says, will have the ex¬ 
ploring instinct. He will answer the challenge of the un¬ 
known. He will be characterized by a certain austerity. 
His mind will develop resistance to common fallacies and 
easy generalizations. He will have the desire to make a 
living and the desire for a reputation but these will always 
be tempered by the desire to use his powers altruistically. 
He must be satisfied with modest monetary rewards and 
care more for those psychic rewards which come in the 


102 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


gratitude of the patient and the approval of society. He 
must combine in himself the peacemaker, the teacher and 
the leader. Back of all these will be his appreciation of 
the Christian motives that make for the satisfaction of 
deep and permanent desires in ourselves and others, not 
merely of obvious desires. 3 

Here is the statement of one of a class of young clergy¬ 
men which attempts to itemize the ministry’s obligations 
to be true to itself and to the larger public: 

As a clergyman I recognize the uniqueness of my vocation 
as the interpreter of all other vocations in the light of God’s 
eternal purpose for a divine community here on earth. 

I will take my place in the historic line of interpreters of the 
Christian faith. I expect to share their fate. I hope to in¬ 
crease their prestige. I will honor and exalt all who have made 
the name of this vocation glorious. 

As an American clergyman, I must operate under the condi¬ 
tions imposed by the separation of church and state. I am de¬ 
pendent on the voluntary giving of people. I will not waste the 
resources placed at my disposal. I will maintain my freedom 
from the state, foregoing all state support. I will be open and 
frank in all my business dealing, especially with my church. 

I will work to increase the number of educated clergy, by 
disciplining my own mind, by encouraging all means by which 
educational advantages are placed at the disposal of clergy¬ 
men. 

I will defend the right of the minority group in religion but 
I will encourage with equal courage all efforts to bring unity 
of mind and effort among Christians. 

I will be loyal to my group by accepting the humble obliga¬ 
tions of a parish ministry but I will seek to lead my people in 
public-minded service to the whole community. 

I recognize the validity of non-Christian faiths and will seek 
to understand them and to work in fellowship with them. 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 103 

In so far as it is consistent with the encouragement of good 
work on the part of all clergymen I will work for and accept 
a basic salary scale for all. Whatever special gifts or conces¬ 
sions are made, such as special discounts, railroad concessions, 
etc., I should prefer to have made to the church rather than 
to myself, hoping that my church will pay such a salary as will 
remove from me the need for any concessions. 

I believe it is my duty to understand the moral phases of pub¬ 
lic questions and to use my influence to build a right public 
opinion. 

I recognize the obligation to do my own thinking. If I use 
the results of the thinking of other men I will give due credit 
for the same. I will guard all confidences entrusted to me as 
sacred. 

I will not undermine by gossip or by any other method the 
work of a brother minister. 

If called upon to render service in another parish I will con¬ 
sult the minister of that parish before so doing. 

I will seek to enlarge and enrich my services of public wor¬ 
ship. 

I will respect and honor the vocations other than that of the 
ministry of religion. In them I see the chance for men to 
honor God in their “ callings.” In the community I see the 
framework in which these vocations are to be carried on, and 
the chance to build the community of God on earth. 4 

If attitudes such as those of this young clergyman or of 
Dr. Cabot’s good physician were shared by all the members 
of professional groups, the problems that face American 
democracy would be well on their way to solution. Can 
the professions be centers of public-mindedness? I believe 
that they can. And I know that if they do not choose to 
accept the responsibility for which their traditions fit them 
they will be regimented and democracy will be on the way 
to defeat. 


104 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


3. Can Class-Conscious Groups Become Public-Minded? 

John Calvin, laissez faire and the discovery of new land 
released more forces in the world than society has ever 
been able to control for the.public good. In accordance 
with the principles of laissez faire, freedom was given to 
industry in the confident belief that each man would best 
serve the state by pursuing his own welfare. It gradually 
became apparent, however, that five selfish men, each pur¬ 
suing his own welfare, do not arrive at common welfare. 
Largely as a result of the failure of . laissez faire the totali¬ 
tarian governments have arisen, which assume that indus¬ 
trial power can be so directed by the state that common 
welfare will be achieved. They embrace the other ex¬ 
treme. Democracy’s idea however lies somewhere between. 

In the two hundred counties of the United States which 
stretch between the Mississippi river and the Atlantic sea- 
coast along the bays of the Great Lakes are the headquar¬ 
ters of two hundred corporations that own 50 per cent of 
the country’s nonbanking wealth and employ 75 per cent 
of its industrial labor. To believe in democracy means to 
believe that it is possible to distribute among their work¬ 
ers more and more of the power of these two hundred cor¬ 
porations, and to believe that after labor has taken in¬ 
creasing control it will not turn around and exploit the 
agricultural hinterland even more severely than the preda¬ 
tory-minded bourgeoisie has done. This is democracy’s 
major adventure in faith, ethics and social organization, 
and it must be captained by the workers themselves. Like 
the professions, business faces state regimentation unless 
it permits the class-consciousness it has unintentionally but 
inevitably fostered to become the new basis of public-mind- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 105 

edness. Can this be accomplished? Can freedom, respon¬ 
sibility and regard for common welfare grow along the 
highway which leads from the factory to the public? 

It would be pleasant if we could record that, as a result 
of moving from home production and neighborhood con¬ 
sumption to high-powered production in factory and on 
farm, we had moved to a well ordered group organization 
of traders, farmers, laborers and consumers, all functioning 
now as public-minded groups anxious to serve the common 
welfare. Actually, however, there would be little realism 
in such a picture. 

For two hundred years we have lived in a trader-con¬ 
trolled world. For two hundred years the basic processes 
of raw material production, conversion and sale have been 
planned and directed by traders. The story takes us a long 
way back in history. I have already referred to the Eng¬ 
lish merchant seamen who three hundred years ago ven¬ 
tured out on the seven seas and by their courage and skill 
lifted England to the leading place in world commerce. 
These men had a sense for navigation; they knew the sig¬ 
nificance of tariffs, customs and currency rates; and John 
Calvin had taught them that it was right to take interest 
and trade for profit. They were more pious than saintly. 
Sir John Hawkins carried slaves from Sierra Leone to 
Spain in a ship called the Jesus of Lubeck and he counseled 
his crews to “ serve God daily; love one another; preserve 
your victuals; beware of fire, and seek good company.” 

These merchant seamen founded such centers of trade 
as Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Here for a hun¬ 
dred and fifty years their sons carried on and then, because 
they also had a sense for navigation, tariffs and currency 
rates, they staged a revolution against the traders of the 


106 THIS NATION UNDER GOD 

home country. According to Charles A. Beard the issues 
were: (1) navigation acts, (2) laws restricting freedom of 
trade, (3) restriction of colonial manufacture, (4) cur¬ 
rency rates favorable to the creditor class, and (5) taxa¬ 
tion without representation — all causes dear to the trader 
heart. 5 Emerging successfully from the war of the Revo¬ 
lution this trader class with the aid of Alexander Hamil¬ 
ton and John Marshall firmly established themselves at 
the center of the new government. Then they began to 
advantage themselves by favorable customs, tariffs and cur¬ 
rency rates. The agricultural south protested and in the 
second great war of the nation was beaten to earth. 

What our trader class had tried to do on a national scale 
their brothers in other nations had tried to do on an in¬ 
ternational scale and the World War came as the culmina¬ 
tion of the world-wide ambitions of those who ruled from 
the port cities on the seven seas. Into this war our own 
world traders dragged us. It was a devastating conflict, but 
out of it we emerged as we entered, industrial-end fore¬ 
most. At the close of the boom period which followed the 
war James W. Gerard could say that fifty-nine men con¬ 
trolled America, and the only protest so far registered is 
from a few who were disturbed because they had not been 
listed among the fifty-nine. Berle and Means give us a 
more factual picture of the situation. 6 They describe the 
two hundred corporations which own most of the tools of 
production and over half the nonbanking wealth of the 
United States. The territory which they occupy has the 
greatest concentration of population in the country, pub¬ 
lishes most of the newspapers, loans most of the money and 
elects most of the presidents. 

When the trader class tells the story of its own success, it 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 107 

tries to create the impression that its strength is the result 
of the “ rugged individualism ” it has upheld. But as a 
matter of fact no other class has been the recipient of so 
many special privileges. Its success is owing not so much 
to rugged individualism as to the fact that it has carried a 
bag of tricks. It has bargained across two counters, over 
one with the workman for his labor and over the other with 
the farmer for his raw materials. In both these bargaining 
operations it has been clever enough to limit competition 
among its own members and multiply competition among 
those on the other side of the counter. If we examine this 
bag of tricks we shall find five major ones. 

First is the advantage which those at the center of society 
always have over those at the circumference — that of 
quick information and ready conference, and the means 
and ability to play off against one another the groups on 
the margin. 

Second, from the beginning the trader class have been 
the creditor class and they with their spiritual abettors have 
kept alive an enthusiasm for debt-paying as a religious ob¬ 
ligation. They have never been concerned to discover 
whether their system for getting people into debt was valid. 
Any debtor who objected to paying his debt with a dollar 
whose value had doubled since the debt was incurred they 
declared to be a repudiator of honesty and a moral outcast. 

Third, this class has written the country’s tariff laws and 
thus created a situation where its bargaining power was al¬ 
most double that of the farmer with whom it bargained. 
The farmer has sold in a world market and bought in a 
protected market. The tariff has cost him eight dollars to 
every dollar it has made for him. 

Fourth, the traders have written most of the tax laws of 


108 THIS NATION UNDER GOD 

the country and thus have succeeded in putting an undue 
burden on the owner of tangible real estate. Taxes ab¬ 
sorb seven per cent of urban net rent and thirty-five per 
cent of rural net rent. 

Finally, these men have voted themselves unbelievably 
large rewards for doing the things which traders do. Their 
incomes make the kings of the feudal ages look like pov¬ 
erty-stricken beggars, and are out of all proportion to any 
possible service the recipients can render society. One of 
the trader class was recently appointed a receiver of three 
defunct banks in which poor depositors lost millions. For 
a few months’ work the receiver was allowed a salary of 
fifty-seven thousand dollars. A group of real estate men 
who some time ago carried through a fairly simple plan for 
the transfer of certain land to the city of Chicago charged a 
commission which ran into the millions for each member 
of the firm. The professional men who associate with the 
traders place the same high valuation on their own services. 
The idea that these men earn the sums at which they value 
their services is a fiction believed only by the simple- 
minded. 

But even more important, these men and their kind, 
their families and their children, set the standards of liv¬ 
ing and the ethical goals of society. In that magnificent 
book The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams de¬ 
scribes the moral debacle which took place when, about 
the middle of the last century, money-making as an end 
in itself displaced the dream of the welfare of the common 
man as the goal of American society. 

The social effects of the rule of the trader class are not 
easy to summarize. It would be foolish to deny the bene¬ 
fits that have resulted from that rule — the growth of sci- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER log 

ence, the uniting of the world if not in brotherhood at least 
in neighborhood, the marvelous victory over time and 
space accomplished through the use of steamship, railroad, 
airplane, telegraph and radio. It has been the mission of 
the trader to tie the world together in a great web of com¬ 
mercial interrelations. 

But the items on the debit side of the ledger must not 
be missed. The trader has promoted competition be¬ 
tween and within rural classes and urban labor. The rural 
north and the rural south have voted against each other 
for the last fifty years. Urban classes have kept alive and 
promoted the tradition of rural individualism. The 
trader has fostered overamplification of what men do in 
cities. The size and opulence of the city are out of all pro¬ 
portion to its usefulness. Again, the trader is responsible 
for the distortion of the picture of the nation’s total wel¬ 
fare. Our notion of what business is for is entirely askew. 
We have thought it sufficient that men should grab out of 
it under the guise of profit whatever they could get. Profit¬ 
grabbing has become synonymous with business and busi¬ 
ness men have been interested only in making their profit 
no matter what happened to trade and commerce as a 
whole. Much less have they been concerned with the ef¬ 
fect of their attitude in other places. The moral bank¬ 
ruptcy of the business world has infected and corrupted 
every other field of life, even religion. 

The world around, two great classes are seething with 
revolt: the farming population and the urban proletariat. 
In Russia it was the farmers who joined with the urban 
proletariat to overthrow the trader class of the cities. The 
uprising in India is a revolt of the villages against the dom¬ 
ination of the port cities. In Denmark, the transition to an 


110 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


order in which the farmer participates with self-respect has 
already been made. An enraged rural class has been the 
driving power behind many of the upheavals in the west¬ 
ern hemisphere. The end of the feudal era saw the urban 
classes in revolt; the end of three hundred years of urban 
control of Western civilization witnesses the mutterings of 
revolt on all the great agricultural plains of the world. 

It would be nice if we could record that in this three- 
cornered struggle for power between trader, farmer and 
laborer the government has always sought to exercise its 
authority in the interests of the total national good. Re¬ 
alism compels us to record that the government has gen¬ 
erally been captured by the dominant party in the conflict 
and has been an accessory to the power of the traders rather 
than its master. 

It would be nice if we could record that the church has 
spoken with equal emphasis to each of these warring par¬ 
ties, as it did in the days when the struggle was simple. Re¬ 
alism compels us to record such facts as that, in the time of 
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the actions of 
the Connecticut clergy justified the reproach that they 
were the “ Cossacks of the Federalist party and that, in 
the conflict between Jackson and Adams, the clergy joined 
the bankers in supporting Adams. The Populist struggle 
which culminated in the battle between Bryan and Mc¬ 
Kinley found the metropolitan clergy — Catholic, Jewish 
and Protestant, from Chicago to the Atlantic seacoast — 
voting the way Mark Hanna wanted them to vote. The 
verdict against the church is clear. 

Neither the government nor the church has acted re¬ 
sponsibly. Where then is to be found the leadership which 
will put an end to the industrial struggle that has again and 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 111 

again torn the United States, even to the extent of disrupt¬ 
ing the Union? 

First of all let us affirm that the motive which has lain 
back of the industrial process is utterly bad. It has never 
been mitigated by that commitment to service which has 
often characterized the professions. To believe that, out 
of the process by which people get their daily bread, it is 
right for a man to grab what he can as legitimate reward 
for his activities is to put the whole industrial system be¬ 
yond the realm of morals. Selfishness multiplied a thou¬ 
sandfold never produces public-mindedness. Nothing but 
a moral revolution at this point can reconstruct the in¬ 
dustrial world. 

Again, let us affirm that a system which awards to the en¬ 
trepreneur all that is left after he has paid for raw materials 
and labor and met tax and interest charges, encourages, 
even compels him to drive a hard bargain, to pay the low¬ 
est wages possible and to buy in the cheapest market he 
can contrive to create. This puts a strain on human char¬ 
acter that it ought not to be subjected to. 

Let us affirm, in the third place, that concentration of an 
entire nation’s tools of production in the hands of a few of 
its members cannot be justified any more than can the 
concentration of land ownership in the hands of a few 
feudal lords in a country like Mexico. The same consid¬ 
erations which caused the United States to democratize the 
laws of landholding obtain in the case of the tools of pro¬ 
duction. Ownership of tools must be distributed among 
those who use the tools. 

How are the workers who produce to acquire a share in 
the means of production? The question of method is of 
vast importance, for the method by which power is ac- 


112 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


quired and distributed generally determines the way in 
which it is later used. Power won by violent means is 
likely to be exercised violently. Force begets force. In a 
recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, Bertrand Russell 
discusses the implications of power won by violence for 
the world as a whole . 7 The burden of his discussion is 
that liberty and a sense of responsibility cannot grow out 
of war. War always results in something quite different 
from what was fought for. The American people need 
hardly be reminded of that; they have learned by bitter 
experience that a war to make the world safe for democ¬ 
racy ends in democracy’s utter defeat. But they need to 
be reminded that the same truth holds on a small scale also. 
If labor employs force to obtain control of the tools of pro¬ 
duction it will neither distribute them justly nor use them 
with regard for the total welfare. The dictatorship of the 
urban proletariat will not issue in a world of freedom and 
justice any more than did the dictatorship of landowners 
or of traders. When class consciousness takes possession of 
men the standard of good conduct falls before the urges 
of class pride and class hatred. 

The primary question in the socialization of economic 
power is not whether it is to be distributed through politi¬ 
cal arrangement or through appropriation by mass action. 
The primary question is one of psychological attitudes, 
and this is the field in which religion and ethics operate. 
But there can be no ethics without power, hence power 
must be returned to the disinherited and power must be 
taken from those who have appropriated more than their 
share of it. Let us frankly affirm that the organization of 
farmer, laborer and consumer into their respective groups 
is to be encouraged. But let us affirm also that groups 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 113 

must yield to the obligation of asking what they should do 
in order to promote the world of brotherly men. 

There are those who would solve the problem by taking 
power away from all industrial groups and transferring it 
to the government. The government would add to its po¬ 
litical power the economic power of farmer, laborer, trader 
and consumer. But this solution simply shifts the eco¬ 
nomic struggle to the political field. The men on oppo¬ 
site sides of a bushel of wheat or the consumer-producer 
problem carry their struggle to the seat of government. 
New kinds of tricks are devised, economic revolt becomes 
treason to be dealt with by military means. Such a con¬ 
centration of power at political centers is bad for both gov¬ 
ernment and economics. 

Another solution calls for a coalition of the farmers and 
the laborers to displace the present trader control through 
some kind of revolutionary action. But action of this kind 
does not seem to provide the psychological basis for good 
action later on. As we have already pointed out, violent 
seizure of power does not result in a reign of justice. 

There is another solution to the problem of the social¬ 
ization of economic power, one I believe to be truly demo¬ 
cratic and responsible. It recognizes distinct separation of 
function as between government, economic agencies and 
cultural agencies. The government remains an agent for 
socialization, but with an increasing awareness of the ways 
in which it could be captured by powerful economic 
groups. The economic groups are organized, but they rec¬ 
ognize their obligation to make their class-consciousness 
the adolescent stage of a new public-mindedness. They 
believe that the system of production, manufacture and 
consumption exists for the common welfare and not for 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


114 

private profit. They understand that they are parts of an 
interdependent process and that no one group may seek 
success at the expense of the others — indeed, ultimately 
cannot succeed without the others. Cultural agencies like 
the church and the school are also free but recognize their 
obligation to speak to all groups about that larger good 
which is inclusive enough to be worthy of the public- 
minded devotion of each. That larger good is always 
changing; there is no final statement of it. But whatever 
its specific form at any given moment it presupposes the 
cohesive loyalty of brotherly action. 

4. Moral Sentiment and the Modern State 

Democracy’s competitors, faced with the necessity of 
finding new forms of community, are turning with enthu¬ 
siasm to the state. Their enthusiasm is not entirely unrea¬ 
sonable. The state is one of the most useful instruments 
forged by modern man. But aside from the fact that it en¬ 
courages idolatrous worship of itself, the totalitarian state 
tends to foster irresponsibility by making it easy for its peo¬ 
ple to slip into the philosophy of “ let the state do it.” It is 
quite possible to recognize the importance of the state and 
yet count as gain every center of responsibility which car¬ 
ries its own burden independently. To this theory democ¬ 
racy strongly clings. 

It is foolish to ignore the fact that the state does many 
things well. Only the state is powerful enough to act in the 
face of a great famine. Only the state can muster the police 
force and introduce the sanitary measures to which epi¬ 
demics succumb. Only the state can undertake the great 
engineering projects — the building of harbors, the widen¬ 
ing of rivers, the construction of dams — which make 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 115 

ocean transportation possible and make the inland streams 
our servants. Henry Ford builds a good automobile but 
he operates it on state-provided highways. Research and 
publication by the state make available to all the people 
the wisdom of the scientist. Private institutions educate 
a certain proportion of our people but mass education is 
carried on through the public schools and the state univer¬ 
sities. Through the state social services far beyond the lim¬ 
its of private charity are extended to the needy of the city 
and the great hinterlands. 

But the fact that the state is better able to give services of 
this nature than any other available agency is no reason for 
letting the state “ do it all.” Indeed certain considerations 
suggest that such wholesale turning over of power to the 
state is highly dangerous. Historically the state in the 
modern sense is an agency for the control of social forces. 
Its origins can be traced to the days when the burghers, 
the traders who dwelt in cities, began to preempt the power 
which had hitherto been in the hands of the feudal lords. 
The modern state had its inception as an agency for the 
control of a burgher society, presumably in the interest of 
the general welfare. The burghers, however, looked after 
themselves. They permitted the state to create the army 
but they decided what the army should do. With the ships 
and arms and men furnished by the new governments the 
traders of western Europe set out to capture for their re¬ 
spective states the natural resources and the native peoples 
of the far lands east and west. Thus the state became the 
agent of those who stood at the projecting end of empire. 
And one cannot but admit that its accomplishments have 
been tremendous. 

There are, however, certain functions which the state 


Il6 THIS NATION UNDER GOD 

does not perform well, and if we read correctly the lessons 
of the past there are other functions which it is not likely 
to perform well. When it attempted to organize those 
matters of conscience which demand freedom and a certain 
amount of isolation, the state behaved badly. Religion 
and the state, when either is directly under the control of 
the other, tend to corrupt each other. The same will prob¬ 
ably be true in matters of education where issues are criti¬ 
cal. A prominent educator not long ago remarked that for 
a hundred years education has been busy at the task of free¬ 
ing itself from religion, and that it will probably have to 
spend the next hundred years freeing itself from the state. 

The world of primary contacts, such as the relationships 
within families and neighborhoods, is all the better for be¬ 
ing free from state control. Indeed regimentation here 
would work irreparable damage. In a democracy rule 
must be by majorities even though society does not advance 
majority-end foremost. But if majorities undertook to 
regulate the primary contacts they would probably crush 
out the spontaneity of those delicate phases of life which 
do not await the adoption of a constitution and by-laws. 

Again, to deliver to the political power the responsibility 
for all the functions of society will not guarantee that all 
the social functions will be well performed. If both politi¬ 
cal and economic power is lodged in the same officials, the 
temptation to capture this power will be overwhelming 
and the exercise of such power will leave much to be de¬ 
sired. The Amana community in Iowa separated the po¬ 
litical, religious and economic functions, because, they 
said, good deacons did not necessarily make good business 
managers. The early members of a totalitarian church in 
Massachusetts gave up the law which made citizenship de- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 117 

pendent on church membership because they had discov¬ 
ered that good church members did not necessarily make 
good Indian fighters. 

Finally, the state, which is the power that makes war, 
will always tend toward totalitarianism. In times of crisis 
it regiments both the emotions and the resources of the 
people. Its tendency to organize the economic resources, 
and especially to be the agent of empire capitalism, mul¬ 
tiplies the situations in which it may seem necessary to 
declare war. But once the state has declared war it must 
mobilize all the resources — religious, educational and eco¬ 
nomic— and such mobilization creates the totalitarian 
state. The process is cumulative and self-accelerating. 

Democracy has proceeded on the theory that in separa¬ 
tion of functions there is safety and power. It now faces 
the necessity of proving that cooperation freely entered 
into can achieve a more enduring union than can issue 
from cooperation enforced by the state. 

Nevertheless, in spite of all that can be said about the 
limitations of the modern state, the inevitability of the 
state’s increasing importance must be recognized. New 
social needs and situations have arisen, and in regard to 
these we do not know what the state does well and what it 
does not do well. We must be prepared to explore in these 
regions. But two convictions are borne in upon the stu¬ 
dent of the state. The first is that there are several kinds 
of activities which the state seems to perform well. These 
can be itemized as follows: 

(1) Long-time activities, such as reforestation, which do 
not return immediate profit though their ultimate returns 
are immeasurable. (For instance, it is an interesting fact 
that most of the great breeds of cattle in this country bear 


Il8 THIS NATION UNDER GOD 

the name of some old feudal lord who had the opportunity 
to develop his stock through specialized breeding over a 
long term of years. Work of this kind is now being taken 
up by state agricultural colleges in state-owned herds.) 
(2) Large-scale activities like mass education, the burdens 
of which are entirely too heavy for private forces. (3) 
General activities that make for public welfare, such as 
prevention of disease, guaranteeing of social security and 
large-scale relief, road-building and mail-carrying. Some 
of these the state has carried on for many years. (4) Ac¬ 
tivities which have to do with law and order. 

There are, on the other hand, activities which the state 
does not seem to perform so well: (1) Activities which call 
for special professional skill and devotion. (2) Activities 
which demand extraordinary personal devotion, such as 
the responsibilities of parents. (3) Education which is 
above the average in its experimental quality. (4) Busi¬ 
ness ventures which offer returns but require unusual in¬ 
itiative. (5) Matters of conscience which involve regi¬ 
mentation of private habits. (A good illustration of this 
category is the prohibition activities of the state, which ran 
far ahead of local public sentiment. On the other hand, 
what the state has accomplished in the way of encouraging 
local temperance seems to have been good.) 

At the present time no one knows just where the line is 
to be drawn which separates private initiative and state 
activity. We can advance only in an experimental way. 

The second conviction which is borne in upon one is 
that the state ought not to assume the characteristics of a 
moral ultimate. Yet at the same time we must recognize 
that the state does not exist apart from the large-scale emo¬ 
tions and the moral convictions of the people. This is es- 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 1 1 g 

pecially true in a democracy. Democracy presupposes a 
people spiritually mature and ethically aware, able to exer¬ 
cise that criticism without which it cannot live. Democ¬ 
racy assumes the existence of a moral order which deals 
with matters that are more fundamental than political ac¬ 
tion. On the hither side of all political action there are 
great moral convictions which can and must be cultivated. 

Robert Owen, the greatest prophet of his day, believed 
that a new social order was just around the corner pro¬ 
vided intelligent men set themselves to planning for it. 
But he recognized a great obstacle to his plans — preju¬ 
dice. In his invitation to the public to a convention for 
discussing a new social system, which appeared in the New 
York Tribune for September 25, 1845, he warns all to leave 
their prejudices at home. An exact quotation may be in 
point: 

. . . but let everyone endeavor to repress, on this occasion, 
his own prejudices of locality and the prejudices of others; for 
it is these early imbibed prejudices alone that now stand be¬ 
tween man and a high degree of physical and mental excellence, 
and progressive happiness in proportion as this excellence shall 
be attained. 

But let none suppose that they are not prejudiced. The peo¬ 
ple of all nations over the world are locally prejudiced — in 
their sectarian dissensions, in their laws, governments and cus¬ 
toms, in their classifications and partizan notions. The Jews, 
the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Mahomedans, the Pagans, and 
the Christians, through their endless sectarian divisions, are 
one and all strongly locally prejudiced. Each nation is lo¬ 
cally prejudiced against all other nations — each race against 
all other races — each class against every other class — and, to 
some extent, each one against every other even in the same 
locality. These local prejudices prevent union and destroy 


120 THIS NATION UNDER GOD 

charity, and, without union and charity, there can be no per¬ 
manent prosperity, excellence or happiness. 

Robert Owen was evidently right in regarding these 
large-scale emotions as the greatest obstacle to the bring¬ 
ing in of his utopia. But we no longer catalogue these ex¬ 
pressions of the human spirit as prejudices. We do not 
view them as inferior in standing to those rational proce¬ 
dures which are brought into play in considered social 
planning. We see them as parts of the organization of hu¬ 
man nature. These emotions are always built around val¬ 
ues, which, though they are not all of the same worth, are 
the stuff out of which society is made. Social morale is al¬ 
ways centered around values as objectives and society can¬ 
not go forward without morale. 

Religion in some of its phases also deals with this kind 
of material. Religion is man in his believing capacity, but 
it is also man in his evaluating capacity and in so far as it is 
the latter it provides morale. Presumably religion is built 
around supreme values. Actually this is not always true, 
but at its best religion discovers, defines and defends that 
which is worthy of supreme devotion. A true church fos¬ 
ters the emotions of the people on the high plane of cour¬ 
age and love. 

It is worth while to recognize the probability that we 
are entering a period which will witness another of those 
colossal conflicts that have taken place whenever religion 
struggled to substitute for the secondary values which sus¬ 
tained social morale its own supreme values. Such periods 
were those which gave birth to the Old Testament proph¬ 
ets and that which saw the struggle of early Christianity 
with emperor worship in the Roman Empire. Whenever 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 121 

the values posited by secular society are opposed to the val¬ 
ues which religion declares to be supreme there results ei¬ 
ther a subordination of religion to secular society or an 
open conflict between the two. Whether this conflict is 
destructive or creative depends on circumstances. The 
fact is that often in the past the war between church and 
state has issued in the greatest thinking and willing which 
have ever characterized the human spirit. 

It is from the vantage point of the interrelations between 
religion and society that we can best view the problem of 
human emotions in the social struggle. Society has had 
three classic formulas for dealing with these conflicts: (1) 
theocracy, (2) the totalitarian state such as the Roman Em¬ 
pire and its modern types, and (3) democracy. Let us con¬ 
sider each of them. 

In a theocracy the emotions of the absolute are pro¬ 
jected into the social order. A theocracy might be called a 
society in which all secular ideas are subordinated to the 
emotion of the absolute. God’s will, as expressed in some 
interpretation of it, completely occupies the horizon of 
thought and action. It gathers up and inspires all the sec¬ 
ondary phases of society. Such a period was that of the 
early church. The New Testament community was a the¬ 
ocracy in which religious values were supreme and men 
even went to the length of declaring that the family and the 
state were of little importance, for there was no division of 
labor to give these independent status. The Mormon com¬ 
munity, in which the church is something of a totalitarian 
affair, owning the industries and thoroughly regimenting 
the lives of the people, is another illustration. The New 
England theocracy is a third. 

Theocracies are generally defensible in their earlier 


122 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


stages. They have often represented a fresh transfusion of 
universal-mindedness into society and inaugurated a brief 
period when men lived for the absolute. But sooner or 
later the great emotions depart and legalism comes in. 
The Cotton Mathers become not abettors of the people’s 
happiness but petty legislators seeking out the minor sins 
of their followers. Secondary values are regimented, not 
inspired; petty codes crowd out the spirit. It is about this 
time that the youthful Benjamin Franklins arise and or¬ 
ganize their hellfire clubs. Society once more goes secular. 

In a totalitarian state the inner world of religion is sub¬ 
ordinated to the emotions of a social order. It is not pos¬ 
sible long to maintain a totalitarian state without a totali¬ 
tarian heart. Consequently these states develop some 
device for regimenting the emotions of the people. Rome 
made its emperor the absolute. In modern times totalita¬ 
rian states develop such devices as a highly emotionalized 
nationalism or the idea of racial purity and make this an 
object of supreme devotion. Of course a totalitarian so¬ 
ciety is not necessarily organized around a nation. It may 
center in the family or in some kind of caste system. In 
early days it was organized around the tribe; the individu¬ 
al’s standing with God depended upon his membership in 
a tribe. But the principle is the same in all cases; some 
social value is set up as worthy of supreme devotion and 
other values are subordinated. Only the devices differ. 

Totalitarianisms generally ride in on a wave of prom¬ 
ises to act for the public good. They offer relief from some 
intolerable situation. The present German program came 
in when the German people were suffering from thirty- 
seven futile political parties and the almost equally futile 
church. There is scarcely a tyranny in the Bible which was 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 123 

not established benevolent-end foremost. But in time the 
values which have been absolutized lose their freshness and 
their ability to arouse emotion. They become legalistic 
and institutionalized, tools for oppression rather than re¬ 
lease. Then the revolt for freedom begins. 

The third formula for dealing with large-scale emotions 
is democracy. Democracy trusts the emotions of the peo¬ 
ple, but since the loyalties of the masses are various and cen¬ 
ter about diverse objectives democracy encounters difficul¬ 
ties. In a good many cases the democratic theory has been 
the instrument by which men have pried themselves loose 
from totalitarian relationships. It has emphasized revolt 
rather than organized relationships. The theory of democ¬ 
racy is that critical interplay among the various social 
groups and agencies is the best means of determining the 
standards, interwoven of the absolute and the temporary, 
which constitute the basis of society. Its expectation is that 
freedom of discussion and division of responsibility will 
give rise to cooperative unity. But the deplorable fact is 
that thus far democracies have not succeeded in achieving 
a free collectivism. 

Democracy demands something more than separation of 
function but it views separation of function as prerequisite 
to cooperative organization of functions. It envisions an 
organized society which is the result of cooperative plan¬ 
ning and working. It does not believe in the subordina¬ 
tion of the family or the church to the state, or of the state 
to either. It aims at a society far more difficult to initiate 
and maintain than a theocracy or a totalitarian state — at 
a fellowship of functions in which critical interplay will ul¬ 
timately give rise to a fusion of cultural values. This is the 
form of society which is being threatened today. 


124 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


5. The Church and the Emotions of the Social Order 

Different churches find themselves facing these various 
social orders with varying degrees of friendliness. The 
Roman Catholic Church in theory and practice fits in best 
with a theocracy. Other churches have accommodated 
themselves to the totalitarian society. It is in the demo¬ 
cratic society that the Protestant church finds its natural 
habitat. The Protestant church does not believe in a the¬ 
ocracy, neither does it believe in a totalitarian state. It 
recognizes in the secular vocations a moral validity which 
the theocracy and the totalitarian state alike deny. But 
the problem of Protestantism lies just here, in the relation¬ 
ship of the church to these secular vocations. John Calvin 
released the latter when he declared that it was possible for 
men to serve God in them. The vocations however ac¬ 
cepted liberty and rejected control. Today the Protestant 
churches are once more insisting that the separation be¬ 
tween church and state, which has been a satisfactory for¬ 
mula for some time in the past, is no longer adequate. So 
far as I know no Protestant group wants to re-establish a 
theocracy like that of the pre-Reformation period, and it 
will fight to the death what it believes are the false claims 
of a totalitarian state. But Protestantism also affirms with 
equal conviction that there must be some kind of unified 
relationship between church and society. 

The emotions which organize around the highest values 
are in contact and in many cases in conflict with these emo¬ 
tions which organize around race, nationality, class and 
provincial loyalties. The building of a unified society pre¬ 
supposes the discovery of a hierarchy of values which can 
be the objects of human loyalty and which will give to the 
inner life of man a sense of unity, wholeness and dignity. 


CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PUBLIC ORDER 125 

This, it seems to me, is primarily a problem in the realm 
in which religion operates. It is more fundamental than 
politics and statecraft; indeed it constitutes a major prob¬ 
lem in democratic statecraft. All our major statesmen at 
the present time are saying that progress in the Uni ted 
States awaits a change of heart, a purificationxdLheart, on 
the part of the people. ILtbis declaration means anything 
at all it means that the people must turn to values which 
will make it possible for such plans to be formulated and 
such laws to be passed and executed as will lead to a better 
ordering of national life. 


NOTES 


1 Maine, op. cit., p. 196. 

2 Cotton Mather, Essays to Do Good, Dedication. 

s Richard Cabot, The Art of Ministering to the Sick (New York: Mac¬ 
millan Co., 1936). 

4 From a mimeographed document in the files of the Chicago Theo¬ 
logical Seminary. 

s Cf. Charles A. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: 
Macmillan Co., 1927). 

« A. A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation and 
Private Property (New York: Macmillan Co., 1933). 

7 Bertrand Russell, “The Taming of Power,” Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 

1938- 


The Church Nourishing the Roots of Democracy 

“ You people in Chicago must be very bad people,” an 
old Hindu landlord said to me. When I asked him why he 
replied, “ Because you kill so many cattle. Don’t you 
know that at the root of every hair on a cow there is a 
god? ” Then I remembered that in Hinduism the cow is a 
sacred animal, and the wide implications of his attitude 
came home to me. If anyone thinks that the agency which 
defines the holy does not have social importance let him 
try to promote good animal husbandry in a country whose 
religion sanctifies even the poorest of cows. 

A certain strategic primacy characterizes the religious 
community. It can be set up and become vigorous with¬ 
out waiting for the perfecting of economic, social and po¬ 
litical conditions. It is right here that religion has its op¬ 
portunity. This is why it can be the leaven which leavens 
the whole lump. The religious community is not depend¬ 
ent on social conditions to such an extent that it cannot 
begin to exist and do its work until the environment is 
perfect. The minister’s first obligation is to make the re¬ 
ligious community strong and vigorous, even before he at¬ 
tempts to improve the political and social relationships. 

The power of a religious community to project social 
influence depends on the vividness of its experience of God 
and his revelation in Christ. The church has influenced 
society most when it has been most preoccupied with the vi¬ 
tal experience of God. The minister who makes the most 

126 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 127 

profound social contribution is not necessarily the one who 
talks most about the social order, but the one who most 
profoundly leads his people in a successful experience of 
worship, which brings a consciousness both of God and of 
fellowship in the Kingdom of God. The religious com¬ 
munity must be vigorous if it is to influence society. 

But the religious experience cannot be held in a com¬ 
partment by itself. Man’s nature demands unity. Either 
the religious concept will influence the economic and po¬ 
litical departments of a man’s thought, or the economic 
and political will determine the religious. A vigorous 
Christianity has always projected its great ideas about God, 
salvation and human duty into the ordinary relationships 
of human living. The greatest contribution ever made to 
social science was made by the Hebrews in their doctrine 
of one God who demanded social righteousness. The 
Christian idea of God as Father, which grew out of Juda¬ 
ism, promotes both democracy and brotherliness. Democ¬ 
racy is more than the doctrine of self-determination, which 
can very easily lead to anarchy. It is the social solidarity 
of free men who are held together by the compulsion of 
love and faith. 

That is why the perfecting of the worship of God as Fa¬ 
ther is a first charge on every church. Because a true idea 
of God is the taproot of all true social experience, it is the 
business of every church to lead into every community an 
invasion of seekers after a true experience of God. True 
worship gives the church an opportunity to exercise the 
most profound type of social ministry. In every service 
which binds men together in a new solidarity not manipu¬ 
lated from without but growing from within, the individ¬ 
ual loses himself in a consciousness of God. 


128 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


But not every service where men say “ Lord, Lord! ” ac¬ 
complishes this purpose. Worship has the power to pro¬ 
mote brotherhood; it has also the power to defeat brother¬ 
hood. It defeats brotherhood whenever it places undue 
emphasis upon form, thus causing men to exalt that which 
should be secondary into a place of primacy, and to make 
a sacred function an instrument of pride and exclusive¬ 
ness. When worship does that, religion easily becomes a 
faction alongside of other factions. Worship defeats broth¬ 
erhood when it places undue emphasis upon the individual 
and his experiences with God, to the neglect of his rela¬ 
tionship to his fellow men. Evangelism so magnified the 
importance of inner experience that it made men intro¬ 
spective and neglectful of those other expressions of per¬ 
sonal life which had to do with their obligations to those 
round about them. 

So with prayer which forms part of the worship service. 
Prayer is directed toward God and not toward the congre¬ 
gation. Nevertheless, prayer leaders must bear in mind 
that all the congregations of the world are to be united in 
prayer to God. Liturgical churches accomplish this by 
careful planning of the prayers for congregational use. 
Nonliturgical churches can accomplish it only if the leader 
remembers the power of prayer, when rightly conceived, to 
bind the people together in a great experience of unity be¬ 
fore the throne of God. Liturgical services are generally 
more effective in socializing worship and enabling men to 
feel their unity not only with their contemporaries but 
with the saints who have gone before. The Christian fel¬ 
lowship must always include that vaster communion of the 
saints. 

The spoken word from the pulpit is peculiarly the chan- 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 129 

nel by which the social message can be carried to the peo¬ 
ple. There is a fire which burns in the hearts of men, a 
passion for righteousness, which kindles ever anew the 
heart of the true minister. The apostolic succession in 
which we are all interested is the passing on of that pro¬ 
phetic spirit which burned in the souls of Moses and Isaiah 
to the succeeding generations of men who stand in the 
Christian pulpit and interpret the ways of God. The pul¬ 
pit, after all, is the place where all the other activities of the 
church are interpreted. If the minister is so inclined, he 
can turn the whole church with all its works into “ sound¬ 
ing brass and clanging cymbals.” On the other hand, he 
may so define even the giving of a cup of cold water that 
it becomes a true social ministry. 

The church exercises a prophetic ministry in all its func¬ 
tions if these functions are well performed. The organiza¬ 
tion of the church itself is prophetic if it gives people ex¬ 
perience of successful associated living. For organization 
on the part of the church is inevitable. When trees cease 
to grow bark, when individuals cease to develop habits, 
when patriotism ceases to express itself through political 
parties, when culture abandons customs, then religion will 
cease to develop forms, creeds, social codes and organiza¬ 
tions. Nothing is more futile than a revolt against this 
tendency in religion. We abandon one form only to start 
another. 

Yet in spite of necessary mechanism the church must be 
a brotherhood. The cultured home is not the home de¬ 
void of organization and established ways of procedure 
but that in which mechanism has been reduced to a sub¬ 
ordinate place. True culture makes mechanism the serv¬ 
ant of neighborliness, friendship and love. The church. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


13° 

especially the numerous branches of the church, can be¬ 
come a brotherhood only by the subordination of neces¬ 
sary ecclesiastical mechanism to the brotherly spirit. It is 
the task of present-day Christianity to make the church a 
brotherhood, not by starting a new church, but by gaining 
an understanding of the old and by subordinating the “ let¬ 
ter which killeth ” to the “ spirit which maketh alive.” 

The creation of a brotherly church involves a twofold 
struggle with the systems which are a necessary part of its 
life. First is the struggle with old systems. Tennyson 
said that “ our little systems have their day . . . and cease 
to be.” Everyone who has struggled with the problem of 
church organization knows that these little systems do not 
“ cease to be.” They are likely to hang around for a thou¬ 
sand years and complicate progress. Long after their use¬ 
fulness has ended they claim the loyalty of stubborn dev¬ 
otees. The church faces a perpetual fight to free itself 
from the systems which it devised to meet the needs of 
past generations. Only a living church can hope to win 
that battle. 

On the other hand, the church is always faced with the 
task of devising new systems to meet new needs. “ New 
occasions teach new duties.” New industrial orders de¬ 
mand new kinds of organization and new codes of action. 
The church which cannot project these also fails. The 
church should not be afraid of itemizing programs for 
good action. It must keep its moralizing up to date. In a 
word, the church succeeds, not by avoiding systems but by 
subordinating them to the spirit. It becomes a brother¬ 
hood, not by stripping itself of all established forms and 
customs and codes but by making these the servants of true 
brotherliness. 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 131 

The coming of brotherliness into Protestantism, how¬ 
ever, does not demand organic unity. In fact it is very 
easy to think of conditions under which organic unity 
would be an obstacle to the practice of brotherliness. For 
three hundred years the Protestant churches have been un¬ 
dergirding a fight for individual rights. If they now adopt 
new slogans which imply solidarity, they must not forget 
to leave room for a distinct freedom. Protestant solidarity 
will not ignore three hundred years of development in 
which the fight has been to find standing room for the in¬ 
dividual. 

Again, it is doubtful whether it is desirable for Protes¬ 
tantism so to perfect its ecclesiastical machinery that it will 
become oversensitive about scrapping unnecessary parts of 
it. The unity of Protestantism should be like that of a 
loose-leaf notebook, from which one can discard certain 
parts and to which one can add new parts without destroy¬ 
ing the unity of the book. Protestantism will always be 
ragged behind and in front. In front will be those groups 
which desire to push ahead. Behind will be those which 
are lagging in the march of progress. And yet it ought to 
be possible for these varied groups to be conscious of their 
participation in a great free brotherhood whose strength 
is dependent on its power to give expression to a great 
ideal. Hence they must look upon all ecclesiastical organ¬ 
ization as a means to an end and must apply to it the law 
of service which will require varied adaptations of eccle¬ 
siastical machinery in varied situations. Here too organic 
unity would probably hinder rather than help. Protes¬ 
tantism should not develop a theory which makes sacred 
what must always be secondary and which can justify itself 
only on the basis of its ability to serve something higher. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


132 

Society is sick from an overdose of materialism and of 
provincial loyalties. Paul was perfectly right when he 
said, “ The mind of the flesh is death.” Out of the untem¬ 
pered loyalty to race, class and nation — the ultimate re¬ 
ality for many people — come “ enmities, strife, jealousies, 
wrath, factions and divisions.” The hatreds of the world 
are cumulative. A society based on force and fear will al¬ 
ways disintegrate through its own self-generated hatred. 
Our deepest maladies are moral and spiritual. Only a 
sense of a reality which stands over against the natural 
world, and which is of such infinite value that it makes the 
lesser goals of human striving seem small in comparison, 
will dispel the fevers which annoy the souls of modern 
men. The church must offer to men the opportunity to 
enter into this realm, which is open to the “ pure in heart ” 
and to those “ who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” 

In the place of the religious fraternity which Jesus 
launched stands the modern church. Can the modern 
church be a brotherhood? From the social standpoint, 
all other questions are secondary. Can the modern 
church achieve a group-consciousness which arises to some¬ 
thing of universality? If it is to do so, it must become more 
to men than their consciousness of nationality, class, race 
and provincial locality. It will see in the strife and hatred 
between classes, races and nations an essential defeat of 
its own desire for a growing friendship between men of 
Christian profession of every race, class and nation. 

No greater offense against a brotherly church can be 
committed than to allow the church to fall a victim to fac¬ 
tions and itself become a faction alongside other factions. 
It may be said that in its social ministry the church will to 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 133 

a great extent stand or fall by its ability to lift its people to 
a place where friendship transcends national, racial and 
class divisions. Not until members of the Christian church 
feel a bond of unity which cannot be disrupted by slogans 
of nationalism and class prejudice, will the church have 
made its greatest contribution to social living. 

It is not possible to make into a church a body of people 
who do not like one another. A Christian brotherhood, 
however, is not a social club. A group of nice people who 
like one another and who meet and enjoy fellowship to¬ 
gether fall short of that which Jesus intended the church 
to be. The friendships of the church must not be selfish. 
It is here that the church finds itself in danger of being im¬ 
paled on one of the horns of a dilemma. It can, on the 
one hand, ignore the natural groupings of men and women, 
and devote itself entirely to being a universal fellowship 
which knows neither bond nor free, neither Jew nor Gen¬ 
tile. The danger in this case is that it will fail to reach 
both the bond and the free, both the Jew and the Gentile. 
The church must remember that the apostle who coined 
that phrase considered that he himself was specially or¬ 
dained to the Gentiles and shaped his ministry to that end. 
On the other hand, there is danger that the church, in 
adapting itself to the congenial groupings of men and 
women, will fall a victim to these natural tendencies and 
will cease to be a universal fellowship. 

The part of wisdom for the church is to recognize the 
need of both courses of action. It must organize churches 
which take account of the natural tendencies of various 
groups — tendencies shaped by the ways in which they 
make their living, by national conditions and by race and 
training. Having made this concession, it must strive with 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


134 

all its might to carry out its gospel of reconciliation, which 
will make all men one in the fellowship and calling com¬ 
mitted to them by Jesus Christ. Creativeness is of the es¬ 
sence of Christian fellowship. It seeks always to extend it¬ 
self into new fields. It is happiest when it is bridging gaps. 
Its sweetest moments are those at which it rises in new dis¬ 
coveries into the richness of universal friendship. Its very 
laws spring from the sense of fellowship. 

Right in the early Christian community was not a legal 
code but what a group of men sitting about a fellowship 
table decided to be the law of love in their relationships. 
In this face-to-face conference there was accomplished a 
real reconciliation and a bridging of the gaps which often 
separate human beings. Here master and slave found a 
unity which tempered the relationship and robbed it of 
its harshness, and ultimately led to a change in the status 
of the slave. All this is a part of the philosophy of friend¬ 
ship by which Christianity would solve the problems of 
the social order. 

The giving and the breaking of fellowship brings a most 
serious crisis in the church. When Jesus extends fellow¬ 
ship to the woman at the well, something real and funda¬ 
mental is happening in Jewish society. A historic chasm 
is bridged by this act. The breaking of fellowship is just 
as serious, though its social consequences have generally 
been taken too lightly. When the Methodist Church of 
America broke fellowship over the slavery issue, Henry 
Clay was moved to write: 

Scarcely any public occurrence has happened for a long 
time that gave me so much real concern and pain as the men¬ 
aced separation of the church by a line throwing all the free 
states on one side and all the slave states on the other. 

I will not say that such a separation would necessarily pro- 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 135 

duce a dissolution of the political union of these states; but 
the example would be fraught with imminent danger and, in 
cooperation with other causes, unfortunately existing, its tend¬ 
ency on the stability of the confederacy would be perilous and 
alarming. 

Entertaining these views, it would afford me the highest sat¬ 
isfaction to hear of an adjustment of the controversy, a recon¬ 
ciliation between the opposing parties in the church and the 
preservation of its unity. 

The break came because the church was under obliga¬ 
tion to seek fellowship with the Negro as well as with the 
white man and could not do so while it acquiesced in the 
Negro’s slavery. The fellowship which the church seeks 
to realize is not an easygoing affair. It is not to be easily 
given; neither is it to be easily broken. It may be broken 
only in the interest of moral progress and with the aim of 
ultimate good to the one to whom it is denied. It must be 
given, not on the basis of race or class, but on the basis of 
character. Christians must be slow to anger and quick to 
forgive. If the church draws a line, it must be a line which 
defines real moral boundaries and on the church’s side 
there must remain a yearning for the ultimate restoration 
of unbroken communion. The real indictment against 
the divisions of Christendom is that they have ceased to 
have moral significance, that they distort the Christian 
conscience rather than clarify it. The church can win the 
confidence of all men only by standing for justice for all. 
When it permits special privilege for any, it forfeits the re¬ 
spect of all. 

Is this idea of the church as the force which above all is 
able to improve social conditions a valid one? Is the rela- 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


136 

tion of the Christian fellowship to society such as I have 
outlined? There are four answers to that question which it 
is worth while to note once more in passing. First of all, 
there are those who say that the whole constellation of re¬ 
ligious ideas represents an attempt on the part of thwarted 
humanity to grasp some kind of visionary satisfaction out 
of life. Communism will tell you that anybody who holds 
those ideas is trying to compensate himself for his inade¬ 
quacies in real living. He is building up a picture of an 
unreal world because he does not have the stuff to go out 
and live in the real world. 

Second, there are those who recognize the validity of the 
concept of fellowship but maintain that it belongs in the 
monastery. This is the formula of the Roman Catholic 
Church, but even among Protestants one encounters 
groups who argue for the little islands of brotherhood 
which can be established and safeguarded though the big 
catastrophe should come. 

Third, there are those who declare that brotherhood can 
be exercised only in the primary relationships of life, and 
that we but invite disappointment when we try to extend 
it into the public order. “ You ministers,” these people 
would say, “ can go out and talk about those ideas so long 
as you talk about the family and the neighborhood, be¬ 
cause there those ideas can be realized, there you can have 
social cohesion based on trust and confidence, there you 
can have a philosophy of mutual aid. But you would be 
very wise not to advance beyond that because the moment 
you do you are simply inviting futility.” 

But there is a fourth answer to this question. A Chris¬ 
tianity that hides in monasteries or is held within the 
confines of family and neighborhood is a meager kind of re- 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 137 

ligion. The Christian constants and the sense of responsi¬ 
bility they foster need all of life for their field. There is 
an inevitable relationship between them and the social or¬ 
der — a relationship not unlike a fellowship of architects 
who are building a temple and find their fellowship in mu¬ 
tual stimulation to good works. 

Modern science has given us a world-wide community 
which to a great degree is operating on the basis of laws 
opposed to Christian ethics and is gradually destroying the 
few Christian principles that are still observed in the face- 
to-face relationship. The result is a society that, both in 
its national and in its universal aspects, is not only pagan 
but is so filled with conflicts that it looks as though it were 
going to be self-destructive. If we are going to try to do 
our Christian duty as responsible people, we will have to 
seek to capture for Christian ethics the world of secondary 
relationships, business and politics. This is a twofold 
problem, that of recovering a belief and that of extending 
the experience we have gained in the family and the neigh¬ 
borhood. 

The doctrine of Christian love is something which roots 
in our gospel, something that is comprehensible, some¬ 
thing that is experimental. Now that we have recovered 
love as basic in our consciousness, we face the problem of 
creating communities in which Christian responsibility 
can be exercised. You just cannot take your Christian re¬ 
sponsibility out into modern society as it now is. Society 
simply makes a martyr of you. There is no ultimate logic 
in playing forever the role of a martyr — not if you can 
create communities in which it is possible to exercise 
Christian responsibility. 


138 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


When the Christian churches of the world met at Oxford 
for their conference in 1937, they chose as their slogan, 
“ Let the church be the church.” As it stands that slogan 
may mean almost anything. In order to be useful it needs 
amplification at two points. 

First, it needs to be clearly recognized that the church 
cannot be the church in a society which does not permit 
freedom of worship and freedom of organization, and that 
it is the business of the church to create such a society. For 
if the church does not create such a society it will not be 
created at all. If the church ignores this obligation it is 
likely to be awakened to it when it is too late. It is an 
interesting fact that none of the Calvinistic countries in 
which it was considered good religion to cause trouble for 
the political state is now trying to regiment the church, 
while those countries in which the church either allowed 
God to take care of the political order or claimed the right 
to control the political order, are now attempting to regi¬ 
ment the church or to throw it out altogether. 

Second, the slogan “ Let the church be the church ” does 
not define the church. It is necessary to evaluate critically 
the kind of church which is under consideration. This is 
especially important today in view of the many attempts to 
move from the present divided state of Christendom to a 
church universal in one form or other. Here we can learn 
a lesson from the attempt to unite the nations of the world 
in the League of Nations. At the close of the World War, 
Woodrow Wilson and his fellow enthusiasts sought to cre¬ 
ate a world political society. In their enthusiasm they for¬ 
got that only purified nations could be fit members of a 
league of peace, and they sought to join together nations 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 139 

which were international implements for exploiting the 
weak peoples of the earth. What was buried behind the 
idealistic facade of the League of Nations sent up an un¬ 
savory odor to high heaven before the ink was dry on all 
the signatures to its covenant. The league was lax in re¬ 
straining aggressor nations because all its member nations 
were products and practitioners of aggression. 

In their anxiety to establish an organic Christendom the 
advocates of a universal church are in danger of falling 
into the same error. They offer membership to groups 
which have been the advocates of the closed mind and the 
religious work departments of empire capitalism, and are 
today monuments of ecclesiastical egotism multiplying 
jobs for clergymen and maintaining them in comparative 
opulence. A united church which throws the symbols of 
universality over such groups will be consigned to the Val¬ 
ley of Gehenna for the same reason that other social refuse 
was sent there. The problem that faces the new Holy 
Catholic Church is that of finding instruments of self-criti¬ 
cism which will work as effectively as did the old competi¬ 
tive system. That system, with all its faults, at least al¬ 
lowed the critics of the church to start a new church. 

Is the church strong enough and wise enough to create 
the new society which alone will save civilization? It 
would be unrealistic to deny the fact that the church itself 
frequently behaves badly. It does so because it shares in 
the social order to such an extent that in many of its phases 
it is very much like the social order. The social order — 
and that includes the industrial order — often determines 
the nature of the churches which exist in it. The churches 
of Chicago are an excellent example of the way religions 
drift into a community. They are the result of four great 
racial migrations to the city. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


140 

The first migration was that of the period from 1830 to 
i860. Most of the immigrants came from the eastern sea- 
coast or from the British Isles. This period planted the 
Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptist and Roman 
Catholic churches in the city. The second period, about 
i860 to 1890, was marked by heavy migrations from north 
continental Europe. With these migrations came the 
great Lutheran churches and the north European Roman 
Catholic churches. The third period, beginning about 
1890 and continuing to 1914, witnessed the migration 
from southern Europe which brought great Catholic in¬ 
crease. The Polish and Italian Catholic churches grew to 
as high as twenty thousand members each. With the com¬ 
ing of the World War and the shutting off of European mi¬ 
gration, labor began to drift in from the south and from the 
farms of the adjacent states and Chicago entered a period 
of Protestant growth with large accessions of Negroes to 
the Methodist and Baptist denominations. On the basis 
of these facts it is fair to say that Chicago’s churches have 
been planted by the labor policies of the great industries; 
not denominational secretaries but the needs of business 
have distributed the churches in the city. 

It would be an exaggeration to say that these churches, 
immediately upon their arrival in Chicago, began to teach 
and train a public-minded citizenship. The extreme mo¬ 
bility of urban population has kept all the churches guess¬ 
ing about the problems which have to do with self-preser¬ 
vation. They have been happy if the vertical and 
horizontal mobility of the city has not completely torn 
them to pieces. Only the Roman Catholic Church has fol¬ 
lowed a well planned parish system. The others have 
lived by a catch-as-catch-can system which works to the ad- 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 141 

vantage of those who are at the receiving end of the popula¬ 
tion shift, and to the great disadvantage of those who see 
their membership departing to suburban areas. 

The second factor that has determined the behavior of 
the churches is their attitude toward society. It is not in ac¬ 
cordance with the genius of all the churches to think in 
terms which can be characterized as public-minded. 
There are among American churches at least four easily 
recognized groupings based on their social theories. 

First is what may be called the apocalyptic group. Their 
social point of view is similar to that of the New Testament 
community, which anticipated an early divine interven¬ 
tion in the social order. They “ dynamited ” the prevail¬ 
ing order with the doctrine of the second coming of Christ. 
The fact that that order was evil brought them more con¬ 
solation than anguish, for the pervasiveness of evil made 
them certain that Christ’s coming was near at hand. This 
point of view prevails today in a surprisingly large section 
of the American churches. They have little interest in im¬ 
proving the social order, and do not bring any great pres¬ 
sure to bear on the state or on other social institutions. 

The second group reflects the historic point of view of 
the Lutheran church, which accepts the existing state as a 
God-given order, one which the church is not called upon 
either to improve or to disapprove of publicly. The Amer¬ 
ican churches of Lutheran persuasion have been very loth 
to participate in any movement which would seem to go 
beyond this point of view. 

The third group shares the theory held originally by the 
Calvinistic churches — that it is good religion to cause 
trouble for the political state. This American churches of 
the Calvinistic school have not failed to do. They have 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


142 

acted on the belief that their religious commitments 
oblige them to participate in political life. 

The fourth group is a clearly defined one — that of 
the Roman Catholic churches. The Roman Church has 
not departed from the point of view of the Middle 
Ages; it still believes that the state should be subordinated 
to the church, although it has for some time shown a tend¬ 
ency to define the state as a separate entity and betrayed an 
unwillingness to see that duty to church and duty to state 
may conflict. 

But more important than the churches’ lack of interest 
in public questions has been their lack of discernment 
when they have participated. The record of the behavior 
of metropolitan clergy with reference to civic and political 
issues is neither all black nor all white. But unfortunately 
black predominates. The fine work of a Parkhurst, a Glad¬ 
den and a Graham Taylor does not outweigh the mischief 
done by the great body of the clergy. Their record is sad 
enough to keep their successors humble for a thousand 
years. In most of the great political conflicts of America 
the clergy took the side of privilege. They were utterly 
unable to discern the significance of such men as Thomas 
Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan, 
much less to interpret it fairly. At the time of the Hamil- 
ton-Jefferson conflict, the record shows, almost all clergy¬ 
men championed the Federalist cause. Claude Bowers 
says of this period that 

... all over New England and in New York and Philadelphia, 
ministers were preaching politics with an intemperance of de¬ 
nunciation and a recklessness of truth that seems incredible 
today. The game of the politicians to picture Jefferson as an 
atheist, a scoffer at religion who despised the church and 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 143 

laughed at the Bible, was entrusted to the ministerial corps, 
which did the best it could! ... In Connecticut these minis¬ 
ters were the backbone of the Federalist party machine, with 
Dwight as their leader, than whom none more offensively in¬ 
tolerant ever breathed curses on a foe. In Massachusetts when 
the Rev. Ebenezer Bradford espoused the cause of democracy, 
he was ferociously abused by his fellow ministers and the Fed¬ 
eralist papers, ostracized in the name of Christ by his fellow 
clergymen and refused a pulpit in Essex county. It was not a 
time when ministers in some sections were making much of the 
action of Christ in seeking his disciples among workers and fish¬ 
ermen. 1 

At the time of the controversy between Jackson and Ad¬ 
ams the clergy again took sides with the reactionaries. 
Jackson’s opponents had the support not only of the metro¬ 
politan newspapers, the Federal office-holders, manufactur¬ 
ers and bankers, but also of the great majority of clergy¬ 
men. And so in many another political battle. Clerical 
forces almost invariably identified themselves with re¬ 
action. 

The record for the great struggle of the 1890’s between 
the capitalists of the Gilded Age and the radical Demo¬ 
crats is unusually complete. Mark Hanna, the leader of 
the Republican capitalists, was able to line up the metro¬ 
politan clergy almost to a man. It was the old issue be¬ 
tween those who had borrowed money when wheat was 
worth a dollar a bushel and those who were trying to col¬ 
lect the debts in full when wheat had dropped to forty 
cents a bushel — an issue which is so easy to solve by de¬ 
claring that people should pay their honest debts. The 
suggestion of Bryan and Altgeld that it would be fair to 
inflate the currency by coinage of silver met with violent 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


144 

opposition from those whom Hanna represented. Organ¬ 
ized labor joined in the cry against Bryan because it saw 
in free silver a threat to the buying power of wages. In 
the eastern centers of commerce, Hanna’s point of view had 
the support of men like Parkhurst, MacArthur, Henry Van 
Dyke, W. H. Faunce, Charles H. Thompson and others 
equally notable. In Chicago, the meeting place of east and 
west, the clergy let itself go. During the last week of Sep¬ 
tember and October in 1896, Chicago’s newspapers were 
filled with reports of sermons in which Bryan was called 
all the varieties of demagogue which the amenities of pul¬ 
pit language would allow. Here are typical excerpts taken 
from the reports of sermons which appeared in a single 
newspaper on a single Monday morning in September of 
that hectic campaign: 

But now has arisen another sectional prejudice, being 
strengthened by him who is going over our country speaking 
of one large and important section of these United States as 
the “ enemies’ country.” These are not the words of a patriot 
or a safe popular leader, but rather of a demagogue. No less 
regrettable is the effort on his part to array what he is pleased 
to call “ the masses against the classes.” 

The other impending evil, in some respects the greatest of 
all, is that of a depreciated and uncertain currency with the 
consequent dishonor that would attach to the nation and all 
who desire it that they may earlier pay their debts. . . . Thank 
God, as in 1776 and as was true in the north in 1861, so now 
the ministry, with almost complete unanimity, see eye to eye 
in this crisis. 2 — Rev. J. W. Caldwell, Park Avenue Methodist 
Church. 

Now the question we have to answer is whether the proposi¬ 
tion to open our mints to the free and unlimited coinage of 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 145 

silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 will give this country a depreciated 
currency. If that can be shown we are face to face with an 
issue which should rouse every American citizen who has at 
his heart his country’s honor and his country’s welfare to a 
sense of the responsibility of citizenship. 3 — Rev. Dr. Rubin - 
kam, University Congregational Church. 

The critical stage in the progress of disease is no time to test 
the quality of certain individual remedies. We should not 
work and pray for the realization of an impossible or experi¬ 
mental platform of political principles but a possible and con¬ 
servative one. 4 — Rev. ]. P. Brushingham, Fulton Street Meth¬ 
odist Episcopal Church. 

Confessedly the amassing of wealth means thrift, ingenuity, 
economy and perseverance for the individual, while at the same 
time it ministers to great treasure to home and market place. 
Savagery always means poverty. When barbarism starts to¬ 
ward intelligence and Christianity it starts toward wealth. 5 — 
Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, Central Music Hall. 

The demagogue is a spectacular candidate, appealing to ig¬ 
norance and the meanest motives. He makes an ambitious dis¬ 
play of his love for the plain people. 6 — Rev. J. Q. A. Henry, 
LaSalle Avenue Baptist Church. 

The overwhelming majority of our churches’ constituency 
consists of the common people and if, in the matter of the 
issues involved in the present presidential contest, the Chris¬ 
tian churches and Christian ministers are almost unanimously 
arrayed upon one side it is not because they have been bribed 
or browbeaten by plutocrats, but because they love their fellow 
toilers so well they want to see honest labor paid in honest 
money. 7 — Rev. P. S. Henson, First Baptist Church. 

Dr. W. H. Thomas of the People’s Church was a solitary 
exception. He gave more tolerant interpretation of the 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


146 

rising tide of popular feeling against the forces which 
Mark Hanna represented. In the course of his sermon he 
said: 

There is a wide feeling that the wealth and power of the 
country are coming into the hands of a few, that money pow¬ 
ers are oppressing the people through the monopolies and 
trusts, that laboring people and the poor have not a fair chance 
in the struggle of life. If this is true it is a sad truth. God is 
on the side of the people, the side of humanity, and our coun¬ 
try should be on the side of God. 8 

Since the beginning of this century there has been a 
change of attitude among large sections of the American 
clergy. Seminaries today give training in economics and 
sociology, and the social gospel is gaining more and more 
adherents. But it is undeniable that the clergy as a whole 
still tends toward provincialism, and that the church as 
an institution is still conservative. That this is so is not 
a matter of chance. I can give five good reasons why the 
church will not lead a crusade. 

1. The church must deal with old people, but the word 
of the crusader is, “ Let the dead bury their dead/’ 

2. The church must deal with children, but the word of 
the crusader is, “ Woe to those who give suck in that time.” 

3. The church carries a heavy burden of benevolence 
and those who carry such burdens must stay close to those 
who have the means to be benevolent. 

4. The church is a cross section of society and society 
does not crusade majority-end foremost. 

5. The church can always get a majority to vote for old 
causes, but new causes divide its members. Moreover, 
when economic crises come there will always be someone 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 147 

to drag the red herring of religious prejudice or drink reg¬ 
ulation across the road and thus the church will lose the 
trail of a great social wrong. 


But beside these causes for the churches’ conservatism 
stands the fact that when they undertake to lead a crusade 
they tend to forget their function. The churches behave 
badly when they try to be the community instead of the 
interpreter of the community. There is a difference be¬ 
tween symbol and substance. Let me illustrate. Some 
time ago I heard the story of a social worker who called ev¬ 
ery Monday morning on an Italian family with eight chil¬ 
dren and always took with her a little glass of jelly. Now 
a glass of jelly, from the standpoint of substance, would not 
go far in that family of ten, but as a symbol that glass of 
jelly was very important. It was a contribution toward 
the interpretation of personal relationships and as such 
was far more significant than a contribution to the family’s 
food supply. Not to know the difference between symbol 
and substance, in so far as church work is concerned, seems 
to me a grave failing. 

Recently William Frazier, in an article in Advance , 9 rid¬ 
iculed the theory that the church, to be important, had to 
be useful in the sense of doing something. I thought his 
point was in general very well taken. He tells of an ex¬ 
perience which befell him at the time of the Connecticut 
river flood, during which some of the people whose houses 
had been wrecked lived in the church building. He heard 
one man remark, “ Well, I am glad to see the church doing 
something useful at last.” Frazier has rather a good time 
satirizing the people who found it necessary, in order to 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


148 

justify the church, to plead that it was making a contribu¬ 
tion to the housing facilities of persons in need. 

It is, I think, partly this desire to have something happen 
which leads us astray. The Mormon Church recently de¬ 
cided to take all its people off relief and to become the sole 
agent in Utah for the distribution of charity to Mormons. 
The newspapers have given a great deal of space to this 
matter and there has been much praise of it. One of my 
students has just completed a study of this subject. This 
shows that despite the fact that the Mormon Church can 
administer charity within the ranks of its own people with¬ 
out pauperizing them, a number of very serious problems 
arise. The church becomes cluttered up with the admin¬ 
istrative problems involved in giving relief to many thou¬ 
sands of people — a task so enormous that it looks as 
though the church itself may be bogged down by it. More¬ 
over, relief administration on the part of the church drives 
something of a wedge through the community because not 
all people in any Utah community are Mormons, and a 
good many of the more or less negligent Mormons are not 
getting their share of relief. This situation has come about 
because it is the theory of the Mormon Church that it is 
the community rather than the inspirer of the community. 


Again, the church easily confuses the progress of the 
Kingdom with ecclesiastical success. The multiplication 
of church buildings, the increase in the number of preach¬ 
ers and prelates, the swelling of ecclesiastical bank ac¬ 
counts are taken as indications that the influence of the 
church is spreading. At the time when the Roman Catho¬ 
lic Church had reached the zenith of her power in that 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 149 

country, the Archbishop of Mexico was a fitting symbol of 
the institution he represented. I came across this descrip¬ 
tion of that prelate in Mme. Calderon de la Barca’s classic 
Life in Mexico written, I think, in 1837: 

. . . Were I to choose a situation here it would undoubtedly 
be that of the Archbishop of Mexico, the most enviable in the 
world to those who would enjoy a life of tranquillity, ease and 
universal adoration. He is a pope without the trouble, or a 
tenth part of the responsibility. He is venerated more than the 
Holy Father is in enlightened Rome and, like kings in the good 
old times, can do no wrong. His salary amounts to about one 
hundred thousand dollars, and a revenue might be made by 
the sweetmeats alone which are sent him from all the nuns in 
the republic. 

His palace in town, his well cushioned carriage, well condi¬ 
tioned horses, and sleek mules, seem the very perfection of com¬ 
fort. In fact, comfort, which is unknown amongst the profane 
of Mexico, has taken refuge with the archbishop; and though 
many drops of it are shed on the shaven heads of all bishops, 
curates, confessors and friars, still in his illustrious person it 
concentrates as in a focus. 

He, himself, is a benevolent, good-hearted, good-natured, 
portly and jovial personage, with the most laissez-aller air and 
expression conceivable. He looks like one on whom the good 
things of this world have fallen in a constant and benignant 
shower, which shower hath fallen on a rich and fertile soil. He 
is generally to be seen leaning back in his carriage, dressed in 
purple, with amethyst cross, and giving his benediction to the 
people he passes. He seems engaged in a pleasant revery, and 
his countenance wears an air of the most placid and insouciant 
content. He enjoys a good dinner, good wine, and ladies’ so¬ 
ciety, but just sufficiently to make his leisure hours pass pleas¬ 
antly, without indigestion from the first, headaches from the 
second, or heartaches from the third. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


150 

So does his life seem to pass on like a deep, untroubled 
stream, on whose margin grow sweet flowers, on whose waters 
the bending trees are reflected, but on whose placid face no 
lasting impression is made. 10 

It required a successful institution to support a prelate 
in that style. But the success was of a kind the church can 
well do without. The lot of the mass of Mexicans in the 
days when the archbishop rode softly through the streets 
was worse than that of the coolies in the China of today. 

There is no doubt that on many occasions in the past the 
church has behaved badly. But after all her sins and mis¬ 
takes have been counted up, the fact remains that the 
stream of life which flows through the church from the 
foot of the cross is the purest stream that flows through 
history. If all the churches were abolished we would not 
get rid of religion. In the place of the present manifesta¬ 
tions of religion there would arise soothsayers, clairvoy¬ 
ants, necromancers, ouija-board experts, astrologers and 
palm readers. There would be multiplication of all those 
devices by which the unaided human spirit seeks to answer 
for itself the great questions of life which have to do with 
ultimate self-definition and self-direction. No law-abid¬ 
ing social order could be built out of people who assume 
as the major thesis of their thinking that the universe is 
petulant and freakish in its central economy. 


The validity of the Christian church’s claim to be the 
nourishing home of spiritual responsibility lies in its right 
to hold up for human worship a person who establishes 
roles, determines behavior and defines causes worthy to be 
the causes of a universal society. The validity of the Chris- 


THE CHURCH NOURISHING DEMOCRACY 151 

tian church’s claim to be the nourishing fellowship of cre¬ 
ative living roots in the way it approaches humanity with 
its messages. Not all the church’s approaches become the 
basis for creative living on the part of those who are its 
members. If the church comes to you with a code, it does 
not become for you the home of spiritual maturity; if it 
comes to you with a law, it does not become the nourisher 
of creative living; if it comes to you with a book or an in¬ 
stitution, it does not become for you a community of the 
spirit; but if it comes to you with a vocation, a call, a role, 
if you will, which has its source in Jesus Christ, even 
though it is an institution, even though it has a book and 
a multitude of codes — it becomes for you the fellowship 
of creative living. 

The function of the Christian church is to maintain in 
contemporary society the passion of a redeeming God. 
The church has the conviction that its task is to carry on 
in the world what God was doing in Jesus. To be sure, it 
must hold this conviction with certain acknowledged res¬ 
ervations. It must know that it has no monopoly on God’s 
revelation in the world. It must recognize that again and 
again God has used some instrument other than the church 
for the revelation of his will for humanity. On occasion 
revolutions have come along to teach the church lessons 
which were greatly overdue. Again, the church shares 
with other institutions a total ministry to humanity. It 
must recognize the validity of family, school, neighbor¬ 
hood, business and the state as sharers in the total program 
of human well-being. It must trust these institutions as 
well as criticize them. It must be a learning church and 
accept criticism from them, for only a learning church can 
be a teaching church. 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


152 

But recognition of all these reservations does not mili¬ 
tate against the conviction that it is possible for the church 
to keep alive in human society the passion which was once 
resident only in the person of its Founder. The sole task 
of the Christian church is to keep vivid in the world the 
person Jesus Christ as the role-creating person in a Chris¬ 
tian fellowship. The social message of a church does not 
begin when the church meets society; it begins where man 
meets brother man and God meets both in worship. The 
church carries a social message in worship and in social 
action. 


NOTES 

1 Claude Bowers, Jefferson and Hamilton (New York: Houghton Mif¬ 
flin Co., 1926), p. 473. 

2 Chicago Times-Herald, Sept. 15, 1896. 

3 Ibid. 

4 Ibid. 
s Ibid. 
e Ibid. 

7 Ibid. 

8 Ibid. 

9 William Frazier, “ Something Practical,” Advance, Oct. 1937. 

10 Mme. Calderon de la Barca, Life in Mexico (Everyman’s ed.), pp. 
218-19. 


The Church in Social Education and Social Action 

Spiritual maturity and ethical awareness in individuals 
and groups are the first necessity of democracy. Can we 
educate for these qualities? The little red schoolhouse an¬ 
swered the needs of a pioneer society which lived face to 
face and learned democracy in its daily living. But the so¬ 
ciety of today is vastly complex and specialized in all its 
parts. Can we educate for associated living in a democ¬ 
racy of a hundred and twenty million people? 

Training for democracy is not a mechanical matter. A 
system of education which makes dependents of men and 
expects of them only obedience to law and custom can¬ 
not produce democratic individuals. Neither can a system 
which inflates men's egotism. The school for democracy 
aims to produce an individual who is aware of the fact that 
he is not self-made but has received more than he can give, 
an individual trained in social judgment, courageous to 
challenge old systems and rise in rebellion against ancient 
tyrannies. 

Thus far our educational system has not produced in¬ 
dividuals of that kind. The indictment against it is se¬ 
vere. It has not consciously trained for brotherhood but 
has allowed conduct to root in some form of individualism. 
It has made of its subjects skillful performers of petty 
chores rather than men of moral judgment and action. It 
has been content to teach the skills and techniques of liv- 

*53 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


154 

ing, but has not concerned itself with the goals. In at¬ 
tempting to provide a basis for ethical conduct it has 
stressed the motives of fear rather than the motives natu¬ 
rally implied in the conception of God as a Father who 
calls upon men to be brothers. 

Nor has its training given a clear vision of the goals of 
conduct which would make its students free builders in 
the realm of righteousness. The builder of a house can 
set to work freely only if he has a mental image of the 
house he wishes to construct, understands the laws of ar¬ 
chitecture and has a knowledge of building materials. 
Our democracy has neglected to pay the price of educat¬ 
ing its members for great social action. Yet only as it 
faithfully sets forth the goals of conduct and in alliance 
with science gives a knowledge of principles and materials 
can it produce free workmen for a better social order. 

Can we transform our system so that it will educate not 
primarily to increase man’s skill in developing himself and 
his material environment, but in a way which will create 
responsible living in terms of an associated world? What 
is involved in such education? 

In India there is a school called the School for Princes, 
where those are educated who are born to rulership. I 
have sometimes wondered what one would put into the 
curriculum of a school for princes — something, surely, 
that would have to do with the sense of vocation. A good 
deal in the way of techniques and skills would be included 
but the ultimate object would undoubtedly be to give the 
student a sense of his calling, to build his consciousness of 
vocation so that he would know what it is to feel and act 
like a prince. 

The old Hebrew synagogue was, among other things, a 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 155 

place for the building of the consciousness of being a good 
Hebrew. It really was a great folk school. Its curriculum 
was made up largely of the materials which have gone into 
the Old Testament, the tales of Judaism’s heroes, its great 
patriarchs and prophets, leaders and kings. This was the 
stuff with which teachers in Israel fed the minds of the on¬ 
coming generations of young Hebrews. We of today en¬ 
joy reading those heroic tales, and we can imagine some¬ 
what their effect on the minds of youths who identified 
themselves with the group from which these great ones 
had sprung. There were the stories of the relations of the 
Hebrews with their God in the past and the accounts of 
many a contest in the long struggle for righteousness. 
There were the great songs which commemorated the var¬ 
ious experiences that befell the Hebrews on their age-long 
march toward the Promised Land. There was the story of 
Nehemiah rebuilding the old home community. No com¬ 
munity-building story in the world is equal to that tale of 
the rescue of the community from disintegration. Exodus 
in its latter part or Deuteronomy would be an excellent 
textbook for a course in neighborhood responsibility. 
They show graphically how ordinary neighborhood prob¬ 
lems piled up and how they were handled with more or 
less of a sense of justice. They present cases in terms of 
neighborhood justice — what to do if the neighbor’s ox 
comes into the pasture, if there is a fire in the wheatfield, 
if somebody breaks in and steals. 

But the folk school has its limitations. Apparently Mr. 
Hitler doesn’t know that, but it is true. It creates race 
consciousness, and in the end a school that creates only race 
consciousness is calamitous. In time the Hebrew school 
for responsible living ceased to be a folk school and with 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


156 

the emergence of the New Testament moved out into 
something of universal significance. 

The folk schools established by Bishop Grundtvig in 
Denmark resembled the Hebrew synagogue in some re¬ 
spects. In those schools only those were allowed to teach 
who could speak the “ living word.” Just what Grundtvig 
meant by the “ living word ” has never become quite clear 
to me. I think he meant a " word,” a method that en¬ 
larged the individual’s sense of his life’s importance in a 
vocation and which communicated the sense of mission to 
other people. At any rate, the bishop’s schools did not give 
degrees; they did not have much to do with techniques 
such as reading, writing and arithmetic. They were 
schools which fed the student’s sense of vocation, of being 
a citizen of Denmark and a sharer in his country’s tradi¬ 
tions. He was made familiar with the great Danish myths 
and tales. He gathered together with his fellows to sing 
songs, read inspirational literature and think through his 
nation’s problems. Grundtvig’s personal slogan became 
the slogan of the Danish people: “ That which I have lost 
outwardly I will win inwardly.” I was in Denmark at the 
time England was threatening to close her markets to Dan¬ 
ish bacon and dairy products. That would have been a 
severe blow to Danish prosperity. I asked a Danish ac¬ 
quaintance of mine what they were going to do about it. 
“ Well,” he said, “ Denmark has always been able to live 
by improving the quality of what she does.” That slogan 
of Grundtvig’s still holds good. 


The United States can learn a lesson from these schools. 
True, our problem is a little different. Most of our peo- 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 157 

pie do not need to have their self-confidence restored. As 
I know them, Americans are amply fortified at that point. 
But we face nothing less than the nation-wide breakdown 
of a sense of responsible living. We need schools that will 
develop a sense of responsibility in a world of human be¬ 
ings whose only future lies in an achieved brotherliness. 
Just as the ancient Hebrew synagogue trained men in the 
vocation of being Hebrews and the Danish folk school 
trained men in the vocation of being citizens of Denmark, 
so the schools of America must train men in the vocation 
of being responsible members of a democratic society. 
They must foster that sense of divine love which is more 
powerful than all those degenerating forces which drag 
man down to the level of selfishness — the desire to hate, 
the desire to be a member of a particular racial group, the 
blind enthusiasms of patriotism. 

Responsible living can be generated only in central in¬ 
stitutions for the training of the will along these lines. 
And this is a matter our public education has been abso¬ 
lutely unwilling to deal with. It has refused even to con¬ 
sider the question of the perversion or perfection of the 
human will, or at most it has answered it by references to 
the virtues of patriotism or to some kind of self-develop¬ 
ment. The whole realm of the training of youth has been 
invaded by pagan ideas which cannot stand up under the 
stress and strain of life. We see the result — a generation 
of young people who fall victims to any major drive they 
encounter, because their will is organized around some 
short-time objective like business success or sex desire or 
class-consciousness or patriotism. 

The time has come for the launching in the United 
States of an educational program which frankly states: 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


158 

“ We are out to educate for responsible living in the mod¬ 
ern world.” Fragmentary efforts in that direction are al¬ 
ready under way and have clarified the principles which 
must underlie such a program. 

The school for responsible living will frankly expect its 
pupils to take part in the relationships of family, neighbor¬ 
hood and community life. The trouble with many col¬ 
leges and schools is that they uproot young people from 
the field of all their natural responsibilities, organize them 
in such a community of subsidized irresponsibility as the 
modern campus, and nevertheless expect them to develop a 
will for responsible conduct. As De Tocqueville implied, 
the sense of responsibility is generated in the local com¬ 
munity; and on the basis of the local community one is 
able to comprehend the great community. 

The school for responsible living will emphasize not sci¬ 
ence but duty, loyalty, faith, belief and courage for social 
adventuring. It will ally itself with all the vigorous expres¬ 
sions in the community of the will to live on a cooperative 
basis. It will be a Christian thought center for a new 
America. Its constitution will declare that it is dedicated 
to a more just and Christian order in terms of the various 
relationships which I have mentioned. The troubled 
times through which we are passing give witness to the fact 
that the evils of modern society are disasters of the heart 
and not of the head. Once more we are able to appreciate 
the saying: “ Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it 
come all the issues of life.” 

So much for the principles of the school for democracy. 
What would its curriculum include? Very much the kind 
of material the ancient Hebrew synagogue used, the kind 
Grundtvig used, all the great literature which deals with 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 159 

loyalty and duty and love. That material would be pre¬ 
sented in such a way as to create world consciousness rather 
than national or racial consciousness. It would teach peo¬ 
ple to say “ ought ” once more. “ Ought ” is a word that 
has dropped out of the American vocabulary and in other 
countries has been vitiated. I have a friend who is a very 
eminent teacher in a very eminent university. He says to 
the students in his seminar: “ When you come into this 
seminar you must part with the word ‘ ought ’ at the door. 
It is not to be brought in. Here we are analyzing, here we 
are taking the objective attitude.” The application of that 
objective attitude to all situations has brought trouble to 
our universities and to our whole democratic society, es¬ 
pecially today when they encounter a totalitarian state 
whose people are perfectly willing to say “ ought ” in terms 
of race and nationality. The objective attitude cannot 
stand up against the national “ ought.” Democracy must 
develop its own type of “ ought,” one that is more vigor¬ 
ous, more universal, more discerning and more confident 
because it is more deeply rooted and because it is for a 
larger welfare. 

The school for democracy would study immediate prob¬ 
lems as a step to universal problems. It would not at first 
allow its pupils to deal with universal problems, for there 
is danger in that, the danger of a kind of otherworldliness 
which has nothing to do with heaven and eternal life but 
consists in conscientiousness about the remote. It ignores 
the evils at the door to protest against the evils in far places. 
It leads the American to forget the plight of the Negro in 
the United States and lament the fate of Ethiopia. Re¬ 
sponsible living, however, begins with oneself and one’s 
neighbor. Concrete dealing with the problems of one’s 


l6o THIS NATION UNDER GOD 

own community leads gradually to concrete dealing with 
the problems of the world community. 

To sum up: The school for democracy will train its pu¬ 
pils to interpret life and to play responsibly their roles in 
society. It will assign to each individual his task in the 
building of the general welfare. It will take the great mo¬ 
tives which come welling up out of Christianity and di¬ 
rect them into the channels of public-mindedness. 


There was a time when the churches of this country di¬ 
rectly accepted their responsibility for education of this 
sort. There was a time when they bore half the burden of 
higher education. But some of the institutions founded 
by the denominations have been taken over by the state 
and the others have simply duplicated secular education. 
They have been forced to do so because their graduates 
want to get jobs. Nowadays church colleges are doing ap¬ 
proximately what state schools are doing: training people 
in the skills of life. 

Secular patterns have invaded even our Sunday schools. 
There are probably eighteen million people in the Sunday 
schools, almost as many as in the secular schools. But the 
Sunday school does not take itself seriously in this matter 
of responsible living. It has not known exactly what it 
was trying to do. There was a period when the Sunday 
school attempted to prove that it was like secular educa¬ 
tion. Then it slipped over into slogans of self-develop¬ 
ment. Sometimes it has taught the Scriptures, sometimes 
it has taught projects, and a great deal of the time it has 
taught nothing at all. 

Consider organizations like the Y.M.C.A. or the Y.W. 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION l6l 

C.A. These represent a significant attempt on the part 
of the churches to come out into the field with a new type 
of education. But in general they have become agencies 
for training of the body or training in personal efficiency. 
Neither is dealing with the pressing problems of life. 

If our church institutions can be brought to focus their 
attention once more on the true aims of education I can see 
a place for almost all of them. A large number of the 
church-founded colleges — small liberal arts institutions — 
which are about to wink out, can be salvaged in this way. 
Reorientation of this kind would aid also the work that is 
being done in the Sunday school. Our young people’s con¬ 
ferences, with their missionary and social education, are 
just on the edge of it. There has been an enormous 
growth in young people’s conferences all over the country. 
They have developed a great missionary literature for 
building the mind on an international scale. There are 
signs on the horizon, it seems to me, of a distinct advance 
in that field, the biggest unoccupied field in American edu¬ 
cation at the present time. It is the task of the churches to 
push forward. 


But if the church is to help in the building of communi¬ 
ties wherein people can be responsible it must work in an¬ 
other field also. It must constantly criticize society and all 
the institutions of society, and give expression to that criti¬ 
cism in action. 

The right of the church to do these things has often been 
challenged, though perhaps never so violently as today. 
For today the economic conflict is, at least as viewed from 
the outside, the central one, and the economic war is being 


162 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


waged with peculiar bitterness. Hence many of the 
church’s criticisms are directed against the prevailing eco¬ 
nomic setup, which all too often frustrates the individual 
in his search for the abundant life. Let me relate an ex¬ 
perience of mine which seems to illustrate all the issues 
involved in social action on the part of the church. 

A number of years ago there came to my morning class 
several students who were pastors of churches located 
northwest of Chicago in the milkshed. They reported that 
the farmers were rioting over the new campaigns on the 
part of the city and the national government to eliminate 
tuberculosis from the cattle which supplied Chicago’s milk. 
The governmental forces were driving the campaign 
through ruthlessly, and the farmers could only stand help¬ 
lessly by and witness the destruction of the herds they had 
built up over periods of twenty-five years or more. The 
ministers were much concerned, since neighborhood riot¬ 
ing and hatred of the farmers for the city seemed to be de¬ 
stroying all sense of fellowship and Christian charity. My 
department sent Carl Hutchinson out to establish first¬ 
hand contact with the situation. Aided by the Federal 
Council of Churches, he carried on a study which was even¬ 
tually published and had considerable influence in estab¬ 
lishing what became the largest farmers’ organizing and 
marketing agency in the United States. 

In the midst of the controversy a prominent churchman 
of Chicago telephoned me and said that in his opinion 
this situation was entirely outside the province of a theo¬ 
logical seminary. A little later he sent me the following 
letter, which sums up the argument on his side: 

Dear Mr. Holt: 

Apropos our discussion a few weeks ago about participation 
in the milk situation, I am enclosing a copy of an editorial in 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 163 

the Journal of Commerce a day or two ago, which quite likely 
you have already seen. 

It seems to me to raise the old question of whether the 
church, as an organization,, should go into politics and eco¬ 
nomics. 

Several years ago I cut loose from the Chicago Church Fed¬ 
eration, after making an ineffective protest, when it advocated 
the inclusion in the Illinois constitution of a limitation of 
Chicago’s representation in the state legislature. I sympa¬ 
thized with the federation’s purpose to secure better enforce¬ 
ment of laws against vice and liquor, but believed the proposed 
restriction to be violative of sound principles of self-govern¬ 
ment and certain ultimately to defeat its own purpose. 

I have omitted of recent years all contributions to our Fed¬ 
eral Council of Churches, because I was opposed to certain of 
its policies for like reasons. Without endorsing the enclosed 
editorial as a whole I feel constrained to concede that there is 
much justice in its criticism. 

I have always been ready to get on with my fellow members 
of the Protestant churches on controverted questions of belief 
and practice, but if, in addition to the normal religious differ¬ 
ences, one is to be under obligation if he takes his part in the 
organization to fight for his political and economic beliefs, and 
to accept, if he is to continue loyal to the organization, the 
conclusions of the majority of the church along political and 
economic as well as religious lines, it becomes a grave question 
whether one can adhere to the church. 

The greatest bitterness against the Catholic Church has been 
caused by its interference with political matters. I think the 
Catholics have interfered less of recent years. It seems to me 
the Protestant churches are now taking over the very policy of 
which they complained so bitterly a few decades ago, and which 
they still resent on the part of the Catholics. 

I regard it as the religious duty of every church member to 
enter vigorously into such political and economic activities as 
his conscience dictates. I cannot believe, however, that the 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


164 

church as an organization should take part in economic and 
political controversies. 

Some of my reasons for this view are set forth in the en¬ 
closed editorial. In addition to the principle involved, there 
is the practical consideration that participation in politics by 
the churches is bound to excite general opposition and hostil¬ 
ity, which I believe will do great harm to the cause of religion. 

The editorial in the Chicago Journal of Commerce 
which accompanied this letter read as follows: 

The Federal Council of Churches of Christ has recently 
issued a report which demonstrates in the clearest light the de¬ 
gree to which the council is meddling in matters which it ought 
to keep its hands out of. 

The Federal Council has meddled in local matters, in na¬ 
tional, in international; it has gone beyond the prohibition 
question into other questions of social legislation; it has taken 
a stand on the American naval question and on various inter¬ 
national subjects; its president, Bishop McConnell, has become 
president of a nation-wide organization to induce the Ameri¬ 
can states and the federal government to adopt the European 
system of old age pensions; and recently the council has issued 
a detailed report of several thousand words dealing solemnly 
with (of all things!) the “ economic relationships existing be¬ 
tween the dairy farmers in the Chicago ‘ milkshed ’ and the 
milk distributors, the dairy employees (milk-wagon drivers) 
of Chicago, and the municipality itself." 

There is simply no limit now to the kind of public question 
which the Federal Council believes lies within its jurisdiction. 
The line between the things that are Caesar’s and the things 
that are the proper province of the clergy is entirely disregarded 
by the Federal Council of Churches. 

Such clergymen as Bishop Charles Fiske of central New York 
have for several years been declaring that the church ought to 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 165 

cease meddling in social and economic affairs in which it lacks 
knowledge and therefore lacks authority, and ought, instead, 
to confine itself to its ancient business of making good men. 
But the Federal Council entirely disregards such admonitions; 
indeed, it goes further — it issues contrary admonitions of its 
own; as witness an article in the February number of Current 
History, in which the Federal Council laments that there are 
still many ministers who “ have not given themselves energeti¬ 
cally to the social and economic struggle for the lives of the 
hard-pressed masses of the population.” 

Reading this lament, one would think the United States was 
a sad, backward country of eastern Europe, instead of the coun¬ 
try with the greatest total of prosperity, and the greatest dif¬ 
fusion of prosperity in the world today, or in all the history of 
the world! The Federal Council has taken over the thought- 
habits and the very phraseology of European advocates of radi¬ 
cal social reforms, although conditions in this country are 
sharply different from those abroad. Thus adopting the think¬ 
ing and talking ways of European social reformers, the Fed¬ 
eral Council is devoting itself to the task of putting European 
social reforms into effect in this country — one of these reforms 
being the old age pension, the enactment of which, as has been 
said, is being advocated by a national organization whose presi¬ 
dent is the president of the Federal Council of Churches. 

In its wordy and banal report on the price dispute in the 
Chicago milk district, the Federal Council issues alibi after 
alibi for meddling in this matter. “ First,” it says, “ the 
churches exist for the purpose of securing a ‘ more abundant 
life ’ for men, women and children. It should be perfectly 
obvious that any effort in that direction is severely conditioned 
by the physical well-being of the people whose lives we would 
spiritually enrich. If ‘ daily bread ’ is a legitimate subject for 
spiritual concern, daily milk is not less so.” 

The bald absurdity of the last sentence quoted is astonish¬ 
ing. In that sentence the Federal Council says in effect that 


i66 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


because we ask “ our Father in heaven ” to “ give us this day 
our daily bread,” it is the duty of God’s ministers to see to it 
that we get our daily bread, our daily milk, our daily every¬ 
thing else, and get it in exactly the manner and through exactly 
the economic relationships that they think wise. Probably 
never in history has there been a more preposterous perversion 
of Scripture. 

In further excuse for its meddling, the Federal Council says, 
“ Many Christians are coming to feel that the supreme test of 
the Christian church is not the number of adherents it can en¬ 
roll under its banner but its ability to transform and refashion 
the world in accord with its ideals.” 

Thus the church is to interpose in every mundane matter, 
ranging from the League of Nations to the Chicago milkshed 
dispute. And this is exactly what the Federal Council of 
Churches has done. It has engaged in superficial studies of 
the Chicago milkshed problem, and has issued a wordy and 
superficial report. It has promoted conferences at the Chicago 
Theological Seminary, at which was discussed the high theo¬ 
logical question of milk distribution. “ The whole issue,” says 
the council, “ was dramatized in a play given at one of the 
conference sessions by the Seminary Players, entitled ‘ Milk! ’ ” 
The whole issue might better be summed up in the word, 
“ Bosh.” 

It may seriously be asked: Does the Federal Council con¬ 
template any limit to its interposition in social, economic and 
governmental affairs? Apparently it does not. Does it then 
think it can safely meddle forever? Danger lies ahead. The 
Federal Council is pursuing a mad policy. Any church or or¬ 
ganization of churches that attempts to dictate the whole char¬ 
acter of American government and American society will even¬ 
tually be put under government regulation. That is the goal 
that the Federal Council is unconsciously aiming at. 

To this letter and this editorial I made the following 
reply: 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION l 6 j 

If I have been slow in writing the more formal answer to 
your recent letter about the participation of the church in con¬ 
troversial social questions, it is not because the matter has not 
been receiving from me the serious thought which your letter 
deserves. Unfortunately I have not succeeded in condensing 
my statement as adequately as you did, but I trust that it is 
still short enough to merit a busy man’s attention. 

Any discussion of the issue raised by this editorial and letter 
must deal as you say with the historic policy known as the 
separation of the church and state. I accept the principle 
without reserve. We are in a period when all the major social 
institutions have entered into their moral majority and are to 
be so treated. Institutions like the state, the home, the school, 
the professions and the trade associations are entitled to ethi¬ 
cal autonomy. The churches have claimed the principle of 
autonomy for themselves and they have accepted it as a work¬ 
ing principle for other institutions. But the emphasis on au¬ 
tonomy is not to the extent that each institution may go off 
and set up a social order by itself. Some time in the last cen¬ 
tury we rejected the principle of laissez faire as a working prin¬ 
ciple. Our ideal is rather a fellowship of free institutions gov¬ 
erned by a common body of opinion which all help build. 

Professor Cobb in his notable book. The Rise of Religious 
Liberty in America, pp. 15, 16, states the points essential to the 
policy of separation of church and state: 

“ 1. The civil power has no authority in, or over, the indi¬ 
vidual or the church, touching matters of faith, worship, order, 
discipline or polity. 

“ 2. The church has no power over the state to direct its pol¬ 
icy or action, otherwise than its influence may be felt in the 
persuasion of the public mind toward the principles it teaches. 

“ 3. The state cannot appropriate public money to the 
church, or for the propagation of any religion, or any particu¬ 
lar form of religion. 

“ 4. The church cannot look to the state for any support of 
its worship or institutions, otherwise than, like all other corpo- 


168 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


rations, it may appeal, and must submit, to legislation and 
judicial decisions in matters of pecuniary trusts and founda¬ 
tions, the ground of which legislation and decision is not at all 
religious, but strictly civil. 

“ 5. The civil power cannot exercise any preference among 
the various churches or sects, but must hold all as having equal 
rights under the law, and as equally entitled to whatever pro¬ 
tection under the law circumstances may furnish a need for. 

“ 6. The civil power may not make any distinction among 
citizens on account of religion, unless the following thereof is 
dangerous to society. Neither the right to vote nor to hold 
office is to be invalidated because of opinion on the matter of 
religion. Nor, again, is a citizen’s right to bear witness or to 
inherit property to be called in question for reasons of reli¬ 
gion.” 

Now it is my contention that nothing has been done which 
is out of harmony with paragraph two of Mr. Cobb’s statement 
which gives the church the right to make its influence felt in 
the “ persuasion of the public mind toward the principles it 
teaches.” In fact, I think that when the modern church estab¬ 
lishes a research bureau with a trained staff of workers to gather 
the facts which are vital to its programs of human brother¬ 
hood, it is in direct line of succession to the church which es¬ 
tablished colleges and in those colleges placed departments of 
economics. Is there any difference in principle when Dr. 
Timothy Dwight discusses Jeffersonian policies in Yale Col¬ 
lege and Ernest Johnson discusses Bolshevism in the “ Infor¬ 
mation Service ”? I think from all I know that Johnson is 
probably the better trained man. Both were attempts to in¬ 
fluence the public mind and both were in institutions designed 
for that purpose by the church. 

One approach to the validity of this procedure can be made 
by noticing the importance in the modern world of this in¬ 
tangible reality we call the “ public mind.” In a democracy 
the public mind is king over all. It governs political policies. 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 169 

it decides whether a given business will thrive or die. So im¬ 
portant is standing room in the public mind that business or¬ 
ganizations spend millions of dollars in advertising which can 
be considered as the attempt by written page or otherwise to 
create a public mind favorable to themselves. If a public mind 
is being created it would seem that the church ought to be 
held responsible for the spiritual and ethical quality of it. If 
a public mind exists which is out of harmony with the Chris¬ 
tian mind the church has the right to be concerned about it. 
To expect the church to allow this public mind to be built 
along lines out of harmony with itself and never utter a pro¬ 
test is expecting what ought not to be. The church is legiti¬ 
mately concerned with the ethical phases of public opinion. 

The next question must concern the nature of the question 
of the city’s food supply — whether it is legitimately a matter 
of ethical investigation. I think you will agree with me that 
because of its very great importance to public welfare the pub¬ 
lic opinion which governs the city’s food supply ought to be 
free from ideas which are unworthy. For instance, when the 
health commissioner announced last year that “ Chicago had 
the purest milk in the world and the price of milk had not 
been raised to the consumer ” the assertion was more than a 
mere pronouncement in the department of public health. It 
carried the warm glow of ethical triumph. As such it comes 
into the realm where it is right to ask, “ What had been the 
cost of this pure milk to those who produced it? ” The state 
some time ago took the ground that the clothing supply should 
be judged by its effect on the lives of the workers — the sweat¬ 
shop was abolished by laws; likewise we have forbidden child 
labor in the factories and I think in every case ethical consid¬ 
erations are involved. Certainly we have the obligation to look 
behind our food supply to discover its effect on the producers. 

But the question may very well arise as to the competency 
of the church to pass on such questions. Would it not be bet¬ 
ter for the church to confine itself to the old unquestioned 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


170 

moralities about which even the best of us need perpetual re¬ 
assuring? Ought not the church to leave alone questions where 
there can be difference of opinion? As to the competency of 
the church to speak on such questions, the following consid¬ 
erations are to be urged. The church is a widespread and very 
delicate organism. Nothing happens in society which does not 
register upon it. I was pastor of a church for five years in a 
steel mill town and I knew in a perfectly legitimate way as 
pastor of a church certain definite facts about the steel indus¬ 
try. I knew, for instance, the social effects of its employment 
and wage policy. If there was no surplus income nor leisure 
time there was no church since the church was built out of both. 
I knew the by-products of the steel mill in terms of widespread 
human attitudes. The Poles, for instance, hated the Negroes 
who were displacing them in the labor turnover. 

But someone will say, although these existed for me as prob¬ 
lems they would not justify me in passing judgment upon 
them. Here I think another consideration comes to the front. 
The authorities of the steel mills were taking the initiative with 
monthly pronouncements in informing the public about the 
steel industry; they sought to inform us about the good points 
of that industry but they did not say much about the weakness 
which we pastors saw. Some of us thought a false public opin¬ 
ion was in process of forming. Judge Gary said he worked 
fourteen hours a day on the farm and the implication was that 
the twelve-hour shift in the steel mill was a good thing. But 
in communities where there were twelve-hour days and seven- 
day weeks, there were no churches and this constituted a con¬ 
dition in which the church had a right to be interested in the 
same way that inadequate income in the milkshed made the 
support of rural churches impossible. If the pastors thought 
this could be remedied, I think they should call public atten¬ 
tion to it. 

One more consideration should be mentioned here. In pre¬ 
senting its conclusions I think the church should distinguish 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 171 

between those questions about which there can be a legitimate 
difference of opinion and those moral certainties about which 
all agree. Some matters ought to be presented at meetings 
where there is opportunity for discussion, like forums and adult 
discussion groups. They ought not to become a part of the 
service for morning worship whose function is to unite. Fur¬ 
thermore in an attempt to influence the public mind the church 
must use only persuasion and never try to bludgeon by appeals 
to fear. 

The question will be raised, as in the editorial, Does the 
church propose to pass judgment on every issue? I do not 
think so, although f think it reserves the right to do so. Here 
I think it is a question of the urgency of the occasion. The 
church does not establish a college or a hospital when the situa¬ 
tion is otherwise well taken care of. ft much prefers to see 
vocational and political groups exercise their own ethical au¬ 
tonomy. 

Furthermore a distinction should be drawn between the 
control once exercised by the Catholic Church and any control 
which a present Protestant church can exercise or is trying to 
exercise. Fighting for moral causes and fighting for the old ec¬ 
clesiastical control are two entirely different affairs and should 
be recognized as such. 

The question then comes to this: Are there areas of interest 
in the public and private order when the church can qualify 
as a critic? This goes back to the question whether there are 
moral issues which are so essentially a part of the public ques¬ 
tion that public policies cannot be settled apart from them. 
In such cases the church ought to be allowed to sit at the “ cabi¬ 
net table ” and its judgment ought to count in the total public 
opinion which prevails. 

Now what will be the probable results of such a course of 
action on the part of the church? I think the results can be 
contemplated with hope and not with fear. I believe it will 
promote peace and not strife. Let me illustrate in the case of 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


172 

slavery. There was a time in the early years of the last century 
when all the churches were declaring that slavery was wrong. 
Had the churches pursued the policy and spirit of John Wool- 
man, who went about deliberating with his Quaker friends un¬ 
til all of them voluntarily liberated their slaves, our country 
would have been saved the terrible ordeal of the Civil War. 
John Woolman and the Quakers combined in themselves the 
technique of a true Christian procedure, a technique which 
the modern church is trying to revive. Unfortunately we do 
not adequately emulate him, but the fact that we do not only 
argues that we should improve our method. It is needless to 
say that there is nothing of dictatorship in such methods. The 
church would seek to educate and not to exercise lordship. It 
would appeal only to that court of true reasonableness before 
which all national and social policies must accredit themselves. 
Its authority does not extend beyond the rational character of 
its cause. 

Now I am not insensible to your point that the policy will 
add to those forces working for the “ dispersion of Israel.” If 
theology now separates, how much greater will be the separa¬ 
tion if we add social and political reasons for disagreement. Of 
course, another type of strain in the church might neutralize 
the theological strain. I once had a horse which was afraid of 
automobiles and streetcars and always shied when he met one; 
one day, however, he got caught between an automobile and a 
streetcar and went straight. I do not believe that the policy 
will dismember the body of Christ provided we have faith in 
one another’s sincerity and exercise the manners common to 
good social intercourse. I have a picture of a church which is 
a fellowship of those who seek the Kingdom of God. It is a 
fellowship in which the binding tie is comradeship in explor¬ 
ing. I believe such a church will best conserve even the values 
which are now most precious to us. 

Trouble in the milkshed did not subside. (For this I 
am very thankful. The kind of solution which would sat- 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 173 

isfy many people is one that they ought not to have. They 
would like pure milk from contented farmers — the sort 
who would work their wives and five children twelve hours 
a day in the fields and cow barns.) Nevertheless, in spite 
of criticisms such as were embodied in the letter sent to 
me, the committee kept on trying to think its way through 
the situation. The next group to descend on it were econ¬ 
omists from the agricultural colleges and universities. 
They wrote long-drawn-out letters about the law of sup¬ 
ply and demand and the liquidation of the inefficient un¬ 
der the capitalistic system. If they had read history they 
would have known that most of the planks in American 
democracy were put in place by farmers who talked 
about American rights and American standards of living. 
“ What do you mean by justice? ” a young economist asked 
me. “ Justice,” I said, “ is something that a scientific econ¬ 
omist doesn’t know anything about.” 

The artists and the poets and the political scientists and 
the prophets know something about it. Gerrett Beneker, 
an artist, went into the steel mills and painted typical men. 
He chose men who he said would “ knock hell ” out of 
you if you didn’t give them justice. The political scien¬ 
tists know that Americans are the kind of human beings 
who, every so often, “ knock hell ” out of present institu¬ 
tions because they do not get justice. When the economist 
gets caught in such a social shift he rubs his eyes, makes 
some caustic remarks about these “ damned social reform¬ 
ers ” and tries to collect on his accident insurance. 

There is just one fact with regard to the way the city 
gets its milk supply about which I am very certain. The 
ultimate court of appeal is not the law of supply and de¬ 
mand. It has not been so since the city fathers passed a 
law saying that the individual citizen must not keep a cow 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


174 

or a goat in his back yard. The law of supply and demand 
did not determine who should belong to the milk wagon 
drivers’ union; there were fifty thousand men in the city 
who could deliver milk just as well as the seven or eight 
thousand men who did deliver it. The law of supply and 
demand did not govern who should be the distributors 
financed by two great banking firms in New York city. 
Patents, tariff laws and willful combinations had much to 
do with all this, as well as the law of supply and demand. 
There was a law of common consent, rooting back in what 
men thought of themselves and their neighbors, which 
was always more powerful than the law of supply and 
demand. 

The problem of how a great city got its food supply was 
fascinating because there were so many angles to it. So 
many people approached the problem, each with his own 
variety of assumption which rested back on what might 
be called for that person an absolute. There was the point 
of view which could be classified as urban. It always in¬ 
terested me how many times the Chicago Tribune, the So¬ 
cialist party, the settlement workers and the Consumers’ 
Cooperative took the same point of view. Then there 
were those who advocated the use of force. One morning 
the farmers stopped all milk traffic to the city on highways 
and railroads and the teamsters’ union had control of the 
streets of the city. The governor called out the National 
Guard, but as one farmer said, “ Just watch the National 
Guard milk the cows.” The only justification for force is 
that advocated by Gandhi in his hartal: it is the only ges¬ 
ture a big, inert public can understand, but it is a frail 
reed on which to rest. 

Among the farmers were those who appealed to the state 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 175 

as over against the city. They would go to Springfield and 
organize the rural vote against the urban vote. Essentially 
theirs was an attempt to settle the price of food by majority 
vote. Majority vote is, for many, the modern absolute. 
The average Chicago man always looks under the bed to 
discover whether some farmer from downstate is lying in 
wait to rob him. The farmer does likewise. We have gov¬ 
ernment by hallucination in Illinois. 

Then there were those who professed confidence in the 
dictator or in the solution of laissez faire, both equally 
hopeless. The milkshed oscillated between poverty and af¬ 
fluence and the little children went hungry. 

I finally came to the conclusion that the agreements by 
which a modern city gets its food supply constitute major 
problems in regionalism and demand a basic solution in 
ethical attitudes. Regionalism assembles between rural 
and urban forces a set of tensions which can be resolved by 
a sense of conscious unity and collective thinking, like all 
the other agreements by which human beings do together 
what they cannot do by themselves. Regionalism is the 
lineal descendant of the old town meeting which united 
town and country in conscious unity for collective think¬ 
ing. 

Millions of people could have a food supply provided 
they all recognized that this process must exist for all con¬ 
cerned — the producers, the consumers, and those who 
were in between. The accomplishing of this realization 
was largely a matter of education in attitudes and technical 
knowledge. One of the most interesting facts we discov¬ 
ered was that the farmers in the milkshed who were mem¬ 
bers of churches showed a larger willingness to rid their 
herds of tuberculosis in order that the city might have pure 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


176 

food than those who were not. The twenty-nine per cent 
who were church members furnished forty-two per cent of 
those who tested their cattle before city and state forced 
them to do so. 

Millions of people could have their food supply pro¬ 
vided they were willing to make war on special privilege 
which is based on certain assumptions about rights arising 
from force, property ownership, majority votes, state laws 
and city laws, government tariffs, transportation rates and 
combinations in support of some special interest of the 
producer, consumer, labor or capital. It was the will to 
special privilege which had to be fought. The desire for 
special privilege rooted in two sources, greed and fear. 
The assumption that all others were selfish immediately 
induced selfish organization on the part of those making 
the assumption. 

Millions of people could have their food supply pro¬ 
vided they were willing to take account of the naturalistic 
conditions governing that supply. There were reasons 
written deep in the ice age why the territory northwest of 
Chicago and not the territory southeast of Chicago pro¬ 
vided the city with its milk. These reasons were but sym¬ 
bols of those reasons which developed as new ways of trans¬ 
portation developed and new ways of preparing a food 
supply were devised. Here was the legitimate field for all 
that the scientist had to say about the law of supply and 
demand. 

Millions of people could have their food supply if they 
could have the chance to think and act about it as a com¬ 
munity organized around that special problem. The ar¬ 
gument for regionalism seems to me to be right here. The 
milkshed of a great city is a region of which a number of 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 1 >]>J 

important groups are a part. These groups are partly in 
the city and partly in the country. The unity of the proc¬ 
ess ought not to be broken by the artificiality of city lim¬ 
its or state lines. If there is to be democratic or intelligent 
action there ought to be a certain kind of autonomy of this 
particular community. This ought to be accomplished 
without destroying organization which has its own justifi¬ 
cation for other purposes. The old New England town 
and modern regionalism have this in common: they bring 
town and country together for conference. 

Finally, it is foolish to brand those agreements by which 
a great city gets its daily bread as of no ethical significance. 
They are not just secular. They are not just a part of the 
“ scandal of capitalism.” Most of the same old problems 
will arise under any “ order.” Communistic societies 
still face the problem of how many pairs of shoes shall be 
exchanged for a bushel of wheat. 

The letter I wrote to my friend the prominent church¬ 
man of Chicago answers by implication the attacks now 
being made upon the various clergymen who, like those 
who participated in the work of the committee on the milk 
war, are taking a stand on major social issues, such as capi¬ 
talism, fascism, democracy, war and race conflict. But as a 
matter of fact these clergymen are simply following the 
American tradition. There have been four great periods 
of social philosophizing in American history, and in every 
one of these periods the church has been concerned not 
only with private piety but also with the ethical phases of 
public problems. Those periods are: (1) The period of 
the theocracy, when men tried to establish and define a 
commonwealth founded on the Word of God and designed 
to benefit man; (2) the period prior to the election of 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


178 

Thomas Jefferson, when the citizenship privileges of the 
United States were extended to the common man and the 
separation of church and state took place; (3) the period 
of the “ roaring 40’s ” prior to the Civil War, when the is¬ 
sues were the freeing of the slaves and the preservation of 
the Union; (4) the present time, when the issues are the 
social control of capitalism, international and interracial 
peace, and the preservation of democracy. The church 
was not silent during the first three of these periods, nor 
ought it to be silent at the present time. For in a democ¬ 
racy there is supposed to be a rule of public opinion. We 
have given up hereditary monarchy; we do not believe in 
a totalitarian state; we believe in a government by public 
opinion, and no one group has a monopoly on that public 
opinion. It is true that democracy demands a functional 
separation between church and state, but that does not 
mean that a separate body of opinion should govern each. 

That body of opinion which all of us help create and to 
which we must all give obedience is not to be monopolized 
by politicians, by business men, by the newspaper nor by 
the university. It has ethical phases which are of concern 
to the church and to which the church can contribute; 
therefore the church has a right in this field and should not 
be elbowed out by any group which claims a monopoly. 
The cry against preacher-politicians and preachers who 
“ meddle in business ” is the cry of those who desire to ex¬ 
ercise monopolistic control over those areas and do not 
want to be bothered by any ethical issues which the church 
might raise. To be sure, the church is under obligation 
to be intelligent and to raise only those issues which are 
rightly to be considered questions of ethical import. But 
not to raise those issues at the right time and in the right 


THE CHURCH IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ACTION 179 

way is simply playing traitor to civilization. The field of 
social criticism and social action, since it is a part of life, is 
decidedly the province of an organization whose Master 
claims control of the whole of life. 


It has been my contention throughout this book that 
from the standpoint of Christianity, that is a good social 
economy which when it is through with you leaves you a fit 
member for a spiritually mature society. It is from this 
vantage point that our contemporary social orders are to be 
judged. Are they, in their purpose, in their structure and 
in their general behavior calculated to evoke in human be¬ 
ings those attitudes which are consistent with ultimate 
spiritual growth? To be more specific: this standard de¬ 
mands that social orders induct people into the experience 
of increasing self-growth, reliance upon truth rather than 
force, the use of the imagination in determining what is 
good, capacity to associate with others in an experience of 
social faith, and a courageous belief in the ultimate tri¬ 
umph of spiritual values. Through these windows Chris¬ 
tianity will look upon the present struggle of the social 
orders. 

If God is working for spiritual maturity on the part of 
men then the Christian must work for it in terms of the 
social organization of men. God is a redeemer of persons 
and of peoples. The Christian will recognize a strategic 
significance in the primary relationships of life where the 
Christian ethic of love either finds its expression in filial 
devotion or is negated by all the ways in which people in¬ 
side the family and neighborhood can exploit one another. 
The Christian will recognize that there are areas of sec- 


l 80 THIS NATION UNDER GOD 

ondary relationships where people deal with one another 
on the basis of the cash nexus and where the Christian ethic 
takes the form of honesty and fair dealing. There is a dif¬ 
ference between the family and the market place. It is 
futile to take the family relationship into the market place; 
it is equally futile to try to treat all the people whom one 
meets in the market place as one treats those inside the 
family circle. Likewise there is a distinction between fam¬ 
ily relationships and those which are organized under what 
we call political government. Here the relationship is one 
of justice. We do not expect the judge and the policeman 
to behave just as people behave inside the family. It is not 
possible to draw a hard-and-fast line; nevertheless the vir¬ 
tues which are to be praised in a legislature are not neces¬ 
sarily the virtues which are to be praised in the parent. Yet 
it seems the fair part to say that the Christian doctrine of 
love is large enough to include all these relationships. 

With reference to all social orders, however, the Chris¬ 
tian must consistently maintain that they exist not as ends 
in themselves but for God, whose ultimate purpose of love 
must be the end of all society. This attitude calls for 
judgment upon those social orders which set themselves up 
as ends and which work to produce not spiritually ma¬ 
ture individuals but dependent creatures whose only sense 
of security is reliance upon some group or some human be¬ 
ing who has assumed control over them. Christianity can¬ 
not praise irresponsible democracy nor totalitarian orders 
which deny man the chance to be free. It rests on a firmer 
basis. It brings its own order of values and independently 
must criticize both. 



Worship as Basic Self'Direction 

In his book Alone Admiral Richard E. Byrd describes 
the experience of being lost and the process by which he 
found himself. He had advanced in the polar darkness 
beyond the series of bamboo sticks which marked the way 
to his hut hidden in the Antarctic ice floe. 

... I was lost, and I was sick inside. 

In order to keep from wandering still farther from the shack, 
I made a reference point. I broke off pieces of sastrugi with 
my heel and heaped them into a little beacon about eighteen 
inches high at the butt of the arrow. This took quite a little 
while. Straightening up and consulting the sky, I discovered 
two stars which were in line with the direction in which I had 
been walking when I stopped. This was a lucky break, as the 
sky had been overcast until now and had only cleared in a 
couple of places. In the navigator’s phrase, the stars gave me 
a range and the beacon a departure. So, taking careful steps 
and with my eyes on the stars, I started forward; after a hun¬ 
dred paces I stopped. I swung the flashlight all around and 
could see nothing but blank Barrier. 

Not daring to go farther for fear of losing the snow beacon, 
I started back, glancing over my shoulder at the two stars to 
hold my line. At the end of a hundred steps I failed to fetch 
the beacon. For an instant I was on the edge of panic. Then 
the flashlight beam picked it up about twenty feet or so on my 
left hand. That miserable pile of snow was nothing to rejoice 
over, but at least it kept me from feeling that I was stabbing 

181 


182 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


blindfolded. On the next sortie, I swung the course thirty 
degrees to the left. As before, after a hundred steps, I saw 
nothing. 

You're lost now, I told myself. I was appalled. I realized 
that I should have to lengthen my radius from the beacon; and 
in lengthening it I might never be able to find the way back to 
the one certainty. However, there was no alternative unless I 
preferred to freeze to death, and I could do that just as thor¬ 
oughly a thousand yards from the hut as five hundred. So 
now I decided to take thirty steps more in the same direction, 
after scraping a little heap of snow together to mark the one 
hundred pace point. On the twenty-ninth step, I picked up 
the first of the bamboo sticks, not more than thirty feet away. 
No shipwrecked mariner, sighting a distant sail, could have 
been more overjoyed . 1 

Admiral Byrd had the problem of redefining his present 
and planning his future. Ours too is a pilgrimage into an 
unknown world and we must define our present and plan 
our future with reference to constants. 

The primitive man’s constants were his membership in 
a tribe or his relationship to a sacred place or law or per¬ 
son. Gradually sacred animals, sacred persons, cultural 
laws have been discarded. By a continuous refining of his 
constants and a continuous redefining of his relationship 
thereto, man has progressed in his pilgrimage to spiritual 
maturity. All the while man has been trying to find out 
what God is doing and to direct his own conduct on that 
basis. He does not pretend to sit up nights to keep the uni¬ 
verse running; rather he seeks to come to terms with the 
universe, to guide himself with reference to those constants 
of whose significance he has become assured. Primitive 
man had a technique for keeping in touch with his con- 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 183 

stants. He invented elaborate rites for propitiating and 
cajoling the gods who represented the unalterable elements 
in his world. But just as the concept of the forces which 
control life was refined, so also was the method of main¬ 
taining relations with them. Modern worship is not in¬ 
tended as an attempt to influence the purposes of God, but 
rather as a technique for understanding them. It is a 
basic act in self-definition and self-direction. 

The worship experience is not unlike the experience of 
the aviator who takes readings in order to pilot his plane 
to its destination. Howard Hughes said that he had been 
able to accomplish his flight around the world by maintain¬ 
ing celestial correlations, and by communicating through 
the radio with the men who kept watch on the winds and 
clouds. All the aviators of the past, all the geographers 
and astronomers, contributed to the scientific knowledge 
which made it possible for Hughes and his companions to 
fly above the clouds, pick out those points in the clouds to 
which they wished to penetrate and then find the spots they 
sought. The world of transportation and communication 
is in many ways a universal society that speaks a world lan¬ 
guage. East of the West Indies lies the hurricane zone 
where are hatched the storms which so often make a seeth¬ 
ing cauldron of the seas and bring devastation to the coasts. 
There was a time when these hurricanes were terribly dan¬ 
gerous, but now, when one starts, the men who keep watch 
send out little messages that travel between earth and sky 
and carry word to all the ships and to the cities along the 
shore that the hurricane is moving in such and such a di¬ 
rection at such and such a speed. The ships turn to port 
or the ships turn to starboard, the people in the cities leave 
the streets and make their houses fast, and the hurricane 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


184 

passes over or by them, a great wind and a loud noise. It 
has lost its danger because it has been defined with refer¬ 
ence to something. The equator, whether it was discov¬ 
ered or revealed, has become a constant for the world of 
conscious communication, a point of reference for the 
physical world, which makes it possible to chart the earth 
and the sea and indicate distances and directions. When 
the officers step out onto the bridge of an ocean-going ship 
and take their readings they are performing in one respect 
essentially the act which men perform in worship. They 
are defining their present and planning their future with 
reference to a constant which experience has taught them 
they can trust. 

The personal and social world also has its constants, but 
they are of a different order. You cannot insult the equa¬ 
tor or be forgiven by it. The equator deals with the sense 
of space, not with the problems which have to do with the 
vanity, the avarice or the desire for power of the individual 
or the social group. Only a person who can define causes, 
establish roles and judge behavior can be the focal center 
of a world of persons. 

Professor Tausch, discussing the forces which establish 
standards for the great professions, speaks of the part 
played in the development of professional consciousness 
“ by certain dynamic individuals whose personality has 
crystallized the organization about a central idea and who 
have inspired their fellow members with their ideals.” 
These individuals, he says, 

do not pose as moral reformers or pretend even to be profes¬ 
sional leaders. But they illustrate in a way the historic truth 
which H. G. Wells stresses, that the traditional ethical systems 
pale into insignificance in contrast with the powerful social 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 185 

impulses set going by the great religions of the world, impulses 
which are generated largely by personal leadership. Just so 
and only so can a profession achieve full self-consciousness of 
its ideals clustered about a respected and revered practitioner . 2 

I was at Durban, South Africa, on the day of George Vi’s 
coronation. I shall never forget my emotional experience 
as I listened, over the radio, to that marvelous ritual which 
is so much a part of the British empire and heard the voice 
of the king speaking to his people, defining the role of an 
Englishman and the meaning of empire. The king’s voice 
became, in a very real way, the base line from which the 
British empire was defined. Such definition is of the ut¬ 
most importance to the empire, particularly to its more dis¬ 
tant parts where men are lonesome, where they struggle to 
keep alive in their minds its pictures and symbols. Out 
there one is never quite certain whether he is speaking to 
an Englishman in his individual or in his “ empire ” ca¬ 
pacity, and it is rather necessary not to confuse the two. 

One night in Mysore, India, I attended a state banquet 
for British army officials. When they stood to drink a toast 
to the king, spurs and sabers clicking, glasses lifted, the 
toastmaster saying “ Gentlemen, the king! ” I had sensa¬ 
tions along my backbone such as I experience only at sig¬ 
nificant times. When the banquet was over we continued 
sitting at the table; and though the minutes lengthened no 
one made a move to rise. Finally I heard one lady whisper 
to another, “ Have you forgotten that you are the ranking 
lady tonight and no can get up until you have left the 
table? ” All the people in the hall were stopped from act¬ 
ing because one woman had temporarily forgotten that 
she was not just a person; she was at that moment fulfilling 
a symbolic role of the empire. 


186 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


Human societies are based on this kind of thing. Soci¬ 
eties do not decide their actions with reference to imagi¬ 
nary lines in the cosmic structure, but with reference to 
persons who can establish roles and discover, define and 
defend causes. All groups have their leaders in whom the 
group ideas are centered. In celebrating the leader the 
group makes real the fact of its subordination to someone 
whom it considers to be worthy of leadership and who gives 
it a sense of vocation in life. The same is true of the Great 
Leader who is celebrated in worship. By all ritualistic per¬ 
formances and meditation we define our present and take 
upon ourselves obligations for the future. 

If man were not a creature of action there would be lit¬ 
tle need for worship. Since he is a creature of action he 
must continually prepare himself for action through this 
preliminary discipline by which, like an aviator or a ship’s 
officer, he takes his readings with reference to life. The 
old orthodoxy which was convinced that a man was lost 
unless he thus allowed his will to be directed, was essen¬ 
tially right. In emphasizing this need, orthodoxy pre¬ 
pared the way for man’s spiritual maturity. Otherwise 
men dare not advance from the security of the dust. It is 
just this ability on the part of each individual to take read¬ 
ings with reference to certain fundamental constants writ¬ 
ten into the structure of life that constitutes the difference 
between the man of custom and habit and the man who 
is on his way to spiritual maturity. Evangelical theology 
was right in emphasizing the conversion experience. Con¬ 
version is preliminary to independence of soul. The man 
who is converted is transformed from a creature of habit 
and custom or a mere member of a social group to an indi¬ 
vidual aware for himself of certain spiritual constants on 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 187 

the basis of which he can come to terms with what God is 
doing in the universe. 

The truly religious man is justified in claiming to know 
God’s purposes, though not all forms of religion come to 
the same conclusion. Some religions leave men the crea¬ 
tures of ancestral loyalties; some tend to give them fear in¬ 
stead of courage. Christianity however — and it is in the 
terms of Christianity that Americans speak — teaches a 
God, revealed in Christ, who calls men to a vocation which 
they find revealed in the life of Jesus. God and Christ, 
man and his neighbor, become the great constants with 
reference to which the Christian defines himself. His 
growth in understanding these constants is not entirely a 
solitary adventure. He joins with others and in mutual 
meditation and self-revelation, in comparison of experi¬ 
ence and in collective meditation, he finds his way in the 
world. This association has become the collective worship 
of the church. Each week the church celebrates four thou¬ 
sand years of man’s experience with reality through faith 
and love. 

No greater tribute can be paid to the importance of the 
worship experience than the assertion that in worshiping 
man is doing something inherently injurious. Worship, 
say its critics, creates the closed mind, the enslaved mind, 
the “ retreat from reality ” type of mind. It must be ad¬ 
mitted that there are types of worship which do all these 
things. That is why not all types of worship are equally 
valuable. Some types of religious experience increase 
man’s tendency to bluff and to take refuge in cults of self- 
defense. But the very power of worship to harm indicates 
also its power to make for a sense of inward security and of 
life direction. 


188 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


The importance of worship for the achievement of a 
sense of direction in life suggests the need of freedom of 
worship. Admiral Byrd tells how the compass on the trac¬ 
tors he used in crossing the ice barrier would not work be¬ 
cause of the presence of the smaller magneto on the tractor. 
The conscience of men is often deflected from the true ab¬ 
solute by the drawing power of the false absolutes set up 
by the fiat of state or class or race. Freedom of worship 
does not guarantee that man will seek the true magnetic 
pole, but only as he has this freedom does he have a chance 
to seek it. Democracy offers man freedom in worship be¬ 
cause it trusts the uncontrolled conscience to find the true 
absolute. 

There is of course the question whether any religion 
with a historic revelation does not bind the consciences of 
men and leave them dependent and less than spiritually 
mature and ethically awake. The answer is found in the 
nature of the reality with which man seeks to make con¬ 
tact. If a man in worship is faced with a code or an insti¬ 
tution to which he must conform, then religion is an opiate 
which keeps him in a state of bondage; if he faces a God 
who is seeking spiritual maturity on the part of his wor¬ 
shipers, then religion is the perpetual guarantee of creative 
living. The question then is. What are the constants in 
the Christian religion with reference to which man defines 
his present and plans his future? 


The belief that man knows what God is doing in the 
world is the heart and core of religion. Anything which 
falls short of this is mere autosuggestion. The Hebrew 
people down through the ages were concerned with, and 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 189 

had a conviction about, what God was doing through them 
for the world. Their pilgrimage to spiritual maturity was 
a great experiment through which they arrived at certain 
conclusions as legitimate as the generalizations of the sci¬ 
entist. Just as the generalizations of the scientist about the 
nature of the physical world are not considered dogmatic 
provided they stand ready to give evidence on demand, so 
the generalizations of the Hebrews about the inward pur¬ 
pose and plan of the universe are not to be considered dog¬ 
mas but rather the ripened conclusions that came out of 
experience. 

For almost two thousand years Hebrew thought con¬ 
cerned itself with the refining of its concepts of the great 
constants for human behavior. Successes and failures dem¬ 
onstrated the rightness and the wrongness of certain theo¬ 
ries of life. Certain distinct gains were made. Certain ex¬ 
periments were tried and did not need to be repeated. In 
the Hebrew laboratory, the power of a great personality to 
found a community was demonstrated. The prophets for¬ 
mulated the thought and vision of a community based not 
on race or on nationality but on ethical and spiritual quali¬ 
ties. The fallacy of a social order based on autocratic self¬ 
pleasing on the part of the rulers was also demonstrated, 
and the integrating, healing power of the principle of 
brotherhood was experienced by the Hebrews. Thus the 
way was prepared for someone who would gather up in 
himself the fruits of the Hebrew experience and lay the 
foundation for a social order founded on loyalty to a 
person. 

Into this community Jesus of Nazareth was born. But 
there were other communities abroad, certain centers of 
compulsion and fear which furnished the dark background 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


igO 

for Jesus’ life. Rome had triumphed. She had imposed 
her political system on all the nations bordering on the 
Mediterranean sea. It was a system built up on the use of 
force and the appeal to fear. Roman arms made common 
cause with the local authorities in every annexed nation. 
To a people with traditions of freedom such as the Jews 
cherished, Rome’s rule was hateful, foreign, alien, and to 
be endured only because the people feared to throw it off. 
That Jesus knew the hatred of the Jew for Rome is per¬ 
fectly clear from his dealing with the captious question 
about the paying of tribute to Caesar. The question itself 
has no point if there does not lie back of it a great popular 
hatred toward Rome which made it dangerous for a man 
to advocate the paying of the imperial tax. The hatred of 
Rome was also reflected in the popular estimate of the pub¬ 
lican, the official representative of Rome in the collection 
of taxes. He had neither social standing nor religious 
privileges. 

Jewish hatred of Rome had finally found organization 
in the party of the Zealots which, like the Sinn Fein of 
Ireland, was pledged to Jewish independence and the re- 
alization of Jewish national hopes. Those hopes were 
dramatized in Jesus’ life when Satan led him to the lofty 
mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and 
offered him world domination on Satan’s terms. This was 
the dramatic plea of Jewish opinion for a leader who 
should build another world kingdom wherein the Jew 
should occupy the place Rome held in the contemporary 
order. 

Rome was one center of compulsion and fear. The 
other was a theocratic community, the decadent Judaism 
of Jesus’ time. Judaism at its best was not a legalistic reli- 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION igi 

gion which terrorized men in order to force them to 
conform to its prescription. In the reconstruction days fol¬ 
lowing the Exile, the ideal of the prophets, which envi¬ 
sioned men living together in brotherly relationships un¬ 
der the guidance of the spirit of God, had for a time been 
partially realized. But the priest triumphed in Hebrew 
life, and in the fight it made for the preservation of its 
customs against the Hellenism of Alexander the Great, 
Judaism became hard and legalistic. The Pharisees, like 
the Puritans of a later day, won a noble fight for religious 
freedom, but along with the victory they carried the in¬ 
tolerant temper which they had developed in self-defense 
against Grecian arms. So while professing freedom Jew¬ 
ish religion became a matter of petty laws, customs and 
forms imposed upon the people by tyranny and threats of 
social punishment. A religion which had once possessed 
wide outlook and a universal appeal was narrowed down 
until only a Jew with all the limitations of a Jew could en¬ 
joy its privileges. 

Jesus has been called the chief revolt-leader of all his¬ 
tory. He has been pictured as the leader of the proletariat, 
the revolutionary who sought to organize the seething 
forces of unrest in the Roman Empire. It is true that 
Jesus taught a profound doctrine of social justice, but he 
was interested in something more than the starting of a 
revolt. The verdict of Jewish history was clear against 
such a plan. A civilization which can stand alone is more 
than a reaction. It requires more than a revolt to main¬ 
tain a permanently changed society. Jesus had drunk deep 
at the springs of Jewish idealism. He looked forward to 
a society in which love of justice was not content merely to 
rebel against injustice in others. He envisaged a com- 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


192 

munity characterized by moral and spiritual independence 
gained through discipline more severe than that of scribe 
and Pharisee, one whose members had learned through 
self-criticism the art of being just and giving justice to 
others. With true social insight Jesus saw the coming dis¬ 
integration of the hate-"breeding Roman Empire. His 
criticism of the contemporary order was severe. That or¬ 
der was wrong in principle and therefore must ultimately 
break down. 

And Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them. Ye know 
that they who are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it 
over them; and their great ones exercise authority over them. 
But it is not so among you; but whosoever would become great 
among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever would be 
first among you, shall be servant of all. For the son of man 
also came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give his life a ransom for many . 3 

Abraham and Moses had been organizing centers in the 
old community. Jesus offered himself as the center of the 
new community. He would be the vine, others would be 
the branches. He would bind men to him by the strong¬ 
est tie they knew — love and social faith. Society shot 
through and through with suspicion would find faith re¬ 
turning when men came in contact with him. Even in 
his death he expected to draw all men to him. The idea is 
startling in its simplicity. If one man could ruin the world, 
a personality such as Jesus could save it by becoming the 
organizing center of a new order. For those who were 
members of his community were held together by some¬ 
thing stronger than force and fear. Because he was 
worthy of great trust he created faith in them, and they 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 


193 

carried that faith back into the world. The integration of 
the community began when they gave to him trust and 
loyalty. They were not his slaves but his friends. 

This is my commandment, that ye love one another, even 
as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that 
a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if 
ye do the things which I command you. No longer do I call 
you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: 
but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from 
my Father I have made known unto you . 4 

Jesus’ community was a community freed from the old 
compulsion of heredity. A man did not need to be a Jew 
in order to be a member of it. The only foreigner was the 
bad man; every good man had a right to citizenship. 

There come his mother and his brethren; and standing with¬ 
out, they sent unto him, calling him. And a multitude was 
sitting about him; and they say unto him. Behold, thy mother 
and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answereth 
them, and saith. Who is my mother and my brethren? And 
looking round on them that sat round about him, he saith. Be¬ 
hold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the 
will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother . 5 

Jesus confidently expected that his new community, 
characterized by social faith, justice and brotherliness, 
would supplant the old community based on autocratic 
compulsion, fear and heredity. He was not an idle 
dreamer. He was the keenest of social thinkers. He saw 
that communities founded on force and fear always de¬ 
velop within themselves the antipathies which cause them 
to disintegrate. He saw how small communities, like that 
of the home which centers around a good father, grow 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


194 

strong and persist through all the vicissitudes of history. 
Could he not build a world community in which men 
would partake of the spirit of their heavenly Father? Such 
a community would indeed be founded upon rock, and 
all the floods and storms of time could not prevail against 
it. Because he believed in God he had utter confidence 
that God had called him to found such a community. In 
parable and story he set forth his optimistic convictions. 

Another parable set he before them, saying, The kingdom 
of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man 
took, and sowed in his field: which, indeed, is less than all 
seeds; but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and 
becometh a tree, so that the birds of the heaven come and 
lodge in the branches thereof. 

Another parable spake he unto them: The kingdom of 
heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in 
three measures of meal, till it was all leavened . 6 

Jesus anticipated the ultimate triumph of his commu¬ 
nity because he saw that the old order was impossible. It 
could never develop anything but human hate and human 
hate is the negation of community life. His order alone 
was possible. It gave promise of joy, happiness, comrade¬ 
ship, a community of the spirit where there would be 
youth and freshness and growth, a brotherhood which men 
could never outgrow and which would be the crowning 
glory of the creative work of God the Father. But he never 
minimized to himself the cost of the new community. Con¬ 
tinually he warned men against the fallacy of hoping to se¬ 
cure it at bargain rates. The price was high — self-control 
and moral maturity won by severe discipline of body and 
mind. 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 195 

Now there went with him great multitudes; and he turned, 
and said unto them. If any man cometh unto me and hateth 
not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be 
my disciple. Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and 
come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desir¬ 
ing to build a tower, doth not first sit down and count the 
cost, whether he have wherewith to complete it? Lest haply, 
when he hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all 
that behold begin to mock him, saying, This man began to 
build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, as he goeth 
to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and 
take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet 
him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else 
while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage 
and asketh conditions of peace. So therefore whosoever he 
be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be 
my disciple . 7 

The establishment of the new community called for 
men who loved justice enough to seek it for the sake of 
its faith-creating power in society. The Sermon on the 
Mount is a masterly exposition of this thought. Jesus be¬ 
gins his discourse with a recital of those who will initiate 
the new order. They are the people who hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, who are merciful and pure in 
heart. And these qualities are to be found chiefly among 
the meek and the lowly who have come to hate injustice be¬ 
cause they have felt the iron heel of oppression. These are 
the salt of the earth — the people who will keep society 
from rotting. 

What is the nature of the justice of the new order? It 
is not a mere matter of law. It is justice in imagination as 
well as in deed. For action grows out of thought. Men 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


196 

cannot go on feeding the seeds of passion in the imagina¬ 
tion and stop short of garnering the fruits of passion in 
deed. Hence sin must be fought in the imagination stage 
if it is to be fought at all. If the new community is to be 
free from murder, murder must be dealt with before it 
bursts the bonds of the imagination. 

Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time. Thou 
shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of 
the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry 
with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment . 8 

And if the new community is to be free from licentious¬ 
ness, its members must be clean in imagination as well as 
in action. 

Ye have heard that it was said. Thou shalt not commit 
adultery: but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on 
a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her 
already in his heart . 9 

The justice of the new community requires also freedom 
from falsehood. Its builders must tell the truth not be¬ 
cause they have taken oath to do so but because truth¬ 
telling is a primary condition of social trust and faith. 
Public opinion is based on what men speak, and if they 
speak untruth it will be vitiated. 

Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old time. 
Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the 
Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you. Swear not at all . 10 

Nor can justice be maintained on the narrow basis of 
the law of revenge. The law of revenge creates a vicious 
circle of evil. It enslaves men to one another and even- 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 197 

tually shakes the foundations of society. For the self-de¬ 
feating law of revenge, Jesus substitutes his principle of 
love which takes the initiative without waiting for good¬ 
ness on the part of other people. He holds before his dis¬ 
ciples the thought of a love which is like that of the heav¬ 
enly Father who “ maketh his sun to rise on the evil and 
the good and sendeth rain on the just and unjust.” 11 

Ye have heard that it was said: An eye for an eye, and a 
tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is 
evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to 
him the other also . 12 

Again, the new order will not directly concern itself with 
justice in the distribution of material goods. It will seek 
first of all the righteousness of God, confident that in a so¬ 
cial order which has paid the price of a right attitude be¬ 
tween man and man, all men can secure what they need to 
live. The maintaining of right relationships among men 
is the key to the solution of the problem of food and drink. 
And where right relationships obtain, each man will be 
conscious of a true self-respect. He will not give that 
which is holy unto the dogs or cast pearls before swine, but 
his self-respect will never prevent him from laying more 
emphasis upon self-criticism than upon the criticism of 
others. He will not be so intent upon finding the mote 
in his brother’s eye as to miss the beam in his own eye. 

To those who are willing to pay the price the resources of 
the heavenly Father are pledged. At their knock there 
shall be opening and for their seeking there shall be find¬ 
ing. The gate is narrow and the pathway strait, but it 
leads to wide uplands. Other prophets may promise that 
grapes can be grown on thorns and figs on thistles, but they 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


198 

are false prophets. He who would reap the fruits of a per¬ 
manent community must plant the tree of sincere, whole¬ 
hearted righteousness. For such a one there will be a true 
reward. 

Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and 
doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his 
house upon the rock; and the rain descended, and the floods 
came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house; and it 
fell not: for it was founded upon the rock. And every one 
that heareth these words of mine and doeth them not, shall be 
likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the 
sand; and the rain descended and the floods came, and the 
winds blew and smote upon that house; and it fell: and great 
was the fall thereof . 13 

To this vision of an enduring community founded upon 
the love of his Father in heaven, Jesus was obedient unto 
death. And in his death he became significant for all man¬ 
kind. Jewish and Roman justice broke down in dealing 
with Jesus and in their breakdown revealed the need of a 
higher righteousness than that exemplified in either of 
them. Jesus not only brought into being the universal 
society, but defined it for itself, gave it both a foundation 
and a goal and taught it the ways of reaching that goal. 
What Abraham, Moses and Samuel were for Israel, Jesus 
became for the world-wide society of the New Testament. 


Jesus was the first moral teacher to point men to the use 
of their imagination for social good. In a profound sense, 
he made the imagination the instrument of virtue. Not 
a single one of his moral precepts can be observed without 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 199 

resort to the faculty for sympathy. When Jesus is asked 
how one should treat his neighbor, he has but one answer: 
“ Use your imagination and put yourself in his place and 
treat him as you would be treated.” The early Christian 
fellowship was a fellowship of the holy imagination. 

It was a fellowship also which had a sense of vocation. 
Jesus’ great apostle Paul made a unique contribution to 
Christian thinking in his continual references to “ the 
call,” which is the essence of what the new member re¬ 
ceives when he joins the new society. He has a new role 
to perform and the codes of living grow out of his calling. 
The role becomes more vivid for him as he explores the 
meaning of the type of life he has to live now that he has 
given up the old sanctions of race and class and sacred 
place and has left behind him the casuistic legalism of 
the old order. He is an emancipated person, living no 
longer by rule of thumb. But he must not use his freedom 
as an occasion for licentiousness. His is a freedom to fol¬ 
low certain great principles and thus to become an archi¬ 
tect of a world-wide order. 

The new principle is that of love. It is easy to turn this 
thought into mere sentimentality. Jesus said that love 
means all that law ever meant. The law had enjoined the 
regular and systematic worship of Almighty God, respect 
for parenthood, respect for human life, respect for the 
spoken word, and absence of jealousy. Love means all 
this plus a moral concern which uses the imagination in 
discovering new applications for itself. Love is the liquid 
fire of moral energy before it crystallizes into code and in¬ 
stitutional behavior. It breaks up the old slavery of en¬ 
vironment and the attitudes of others. If you will agree to 
treat me just as I treat you I can make you absolutely my 


200 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


slave. I will strike you and you will strike me; I will smile 
at you and you will smile at me. You are not free to de¬ 
termine your actions; the environment I create determines 
them. And when all its members follow the law of re¬ 
venge society cannot stand but gives way to anarchy. 

True love would break the vicious circle — the love that 
Paul describes in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians. 
Henry Churchill King calls this passage the classic defini¬ 
tion of friendship. Without this love, he says, all other 
things are worthless. Speaking with tongues — most 
highly prized of all the spiritual gifts in Paul’s day — mys¬ 
tery-solving knowledge, wonder-working faith, magnificent 
liberality, torture endured even unto death — none of 
these is of the slightest avail without genuine love. “ God’s 
whole redemption is to a life like his own, to sharing his 
life; and that life is love.” 14 

Love is the dynamic of the Christian society. And out of 
it arises an experience of social trust which holds men to¬ 
gether. In the end the question, How is society to be held 
together? must be answered. If men give up the cohesions 
of race and class, geography and nationality, what remains? 
There is a bond which binds more firmly and more last¬ 
ingly than any of these, though it is less tangible. That 
bond is the unity of those who trust one another, who rely 
on that integrity which roots in the fact that all are loyal to 
a constant which demands trustworthiness of each. This 
is basic to any society which would advance beyond the 
beggarly notions of race and class, geography and national¬ 
ity. In the society in which we now live it is probably 
more important than any of us realize. We think we rely 
on law and force. Actually we rely on our fellow men. 
The great mass of men have confidence in one another. 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 201 

When that confidence goes something terrible happens in 
human society. People who trust one another can move 
mountains. They can make all necessary changes in so¬ 
ciety. They can use all the techniques of science to an¬ 
alyze an old social order and project a new one. People 
who do not have the cohesion of social faith are helpless 
in the face of individual need and social evil. 

The society held together by love and mutual confidence 
might be described as a society of friends. One of the most 
notable of the Christian groups has chosen so to define it¬ 
self. Someone has said that those who are fit members of 
this “ league of friendship ” are characterized by integrity, 
breadth and depth of personality, deep community of in¬ 
terest, mutual self-revelation and answering trust. Over 
against these stand the members of the kingdom of evil — 
that coalition of predatory forces which support one an¬ 
other and represent an organized will to destroy rather 
than to build. Professor Charles Merriam says that there 
are two Chicagos — the predatory Chicago and the Chi¬ 
cago of the builders. That is a thought once made vivid 
by Augustine when he spoke of the two cities, the City of 
Lust and the City of Love. The fate of the City of Love 
in the midst of the City of Lust is the fate of those who 
must accept a life of redemptive suffering. 

Can the society of love extend its rule into the wilder¬ 
ness of a world controlled by other principles of conduct? 
It is easy to become pessimistic about the possibility. Nev¬ 
ertheless the jungle has been crowded back at various times 
and places. The traveler in India is impressed with the 
fact that every town of any size has its wall. There was a 
time when the space around every town was a lawless fron¬ 
tier where men murdered, robbed and committed rape. 


202 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


Today most of the children of India grow up without ever 
experiencing such conditions. The walls are merely a re¬ 
minder of an unhappy past. The life of the African native 
is not so full of fear as once it was. There was a time 
when he lived in terror not only of cosmic forces but of the 
tribe which dwelt around the corner of the mountain. To¬ 
day fear no longer grips him. The social jungle is being 
cleared. Bad as the modern world is, the frontier under 
the rule of tooth and claw has been pushed back to the na¬ 
tional boundary line. 

It is not unthinkable that it might be pushed back far¬ 
ther yet. The Christian constants today operate chiefly 
in the private world. But that they alone can serve to 
guide society as a whole is becoming increasingly clear. 
The society they define is a comprehensible one, and the 
techniques for actualizing it are at hand. It is conceivable 
that the Christian constants could dominate business and 
politics, that these could take on the characteristics of a 
world society. Everywhere men are learning the lesson of 
history — that social orders predominantly based on force 
and fear disintegrate because of their own self-generated 
animosities. The chain has not yet been forged which can 
hold together men who hate one another. A social order 
based on trust, on integrity of thought and mutual self¬ 
revelation, held together in its great collective projects by 
confidence, making use of all the skills which science has 
to offer — such an order might extend itself into a world¬ 
wide reality. 

The Christian constant for the world of personal and so¬ 
cial relationships can be approached from ever new angles. 
It is not a fixed line like the equator; it is an abiding rela¬ 
tionship between persons. There was a time when this 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 203 

relationship was conceived as one between a lawgiver and 
a subject, and its violation could be adjudicated by sacri¬ 
fice; by sacrifice the law was vindicated and the center of 
the personal and social universe remained undisturbed. 
In the fullness of time, however, it was revealed that God 
was not a lawgiver who demanded obedience but a father 
who calls all men to fulfill the role of sons in a society of 
brotherly men, the cohesive power of which is greater than 
the cohesion of force and fear. In that revelation sacrifice 
on the part of men is replaced by forgiveness on the part of 
God. If God’s purposes are revealed in Jesus, he seeks 
spiritual growth and maturity for all his children. 

God is using one part of the universe to redeem another. 
Into the hearts of some he breathes the revelation of him¬ 
self as love. These become the world’s great lovers who 
toil with a passion which burns but does not consume. 
Around them history seems to organize as the filings col¬ 
lect around a magnet. Central in God’s constellation of 
lovers stands Jesus Christ. The church is but the institu¬ 
tional extension of his person. It must accept his great act 
of self-identification and extend his passion throughout 
the world. 

Into others God breathes a spirit of new understand¬ 
ing. Our reading of the great drama of a redeeming God is 
different from that of the Middle Ages, to which “ the 
earth was but a mean stopping place, a wayside tavern of 
ill fame, on the way to these other worlds.” 15 John Calvin 
taught men that there is significance in their earthly life. 
Their ways of organizing and performing their human vo¬ 
cations are important steps in the pilgrimage toward eter¬ 
nal life. L. P. Jacks sums up in modern terms the insight 
of Calvin: 


THIS NATION UNDER GOD 


204 

If by “ the world ” we mean such things as parliamentary 
or municipal government, the great industries of the na¬ 
tion, the professions of medicine, law and arms, the fine arts, 
the courts of justice, the hospitals, the enterprises of education, 
the pursuit of physical science and its application to the arts 
of life, the domestic economy of millions of homes, the daily 
work of all toilers — if, in short, we include that huge complex 
of secular activities which keeps the world up from hour to 
hour, and society as a going concern — then the churches which 
stand apart and describe all this as morally bankrupt are sim¬ 
ply advertising themselves as the occupiers of a position as 
mischievous as it is false. In the words of Principal Caird, 
“ The proposition would be unintelligible unless it were false/’ 
If, on the other hand, we exclude these things from our defi¬ 
nition, what, in reason, do we mean by “ the world ”? The 
alienation from church life of so much that is good in modern 
culture and so much that is earnest in every class is the natural 
sequel to the traditional attitude of the church to the world. 
And now the world takes deadly revenge by retaining the po¬ 
sition assigned her and standing aloof from the church . 16 

Nor will we read the divine drama exactly as the early 
Puritan read it. We will agree with Cotton Mather that 
God is the redeemer of persons and of peoples. But in 
place of the divinely inspired legislation of the Old Testa¬ 
ment we set a love which is more dynamic, if less definite. 
We do not know of a God who spares man the necessity 
of making great decisions which call for both courage and 
adventure. We have more confidence in the God whose 
will is revealed in nature and in history although we still 
believe that his revelation in the face of Jesus Christ is the 
purest revelation of himself. We believe that this God 
was active in the past and is active in the present. He re¬ 
veals himself to his church, but through events in history 


WORSHIP AS BASIC SELF-DIRECTION 205 

he sometimes teaches his church a lesson which the church 
has forgotten or failed to learn. We recognize that the 
great lovers of history do not face a friendly world. The 
cross is still there to mark the conflict between the love of 
God and the world which he is redeeming. 


NOTES 


1 Byrd, op. cit., pp. 117-18. 

2 Carl F. Tausch, Professional and Business Ethics (New York: Henry 
Holt & Co., 1926), p. 20. 

3 Mark 10:42-45. 

* John 15:12-15. 
s Mark 3:31-35. 
e Matt. 13:31-33. 

7 Luke 14:25-33. 
s Matt. 5:21-22. 

9 Matt. 5:27-28. 

10 Matt. 5:33-34. 

11 Matt. 5:45. 

12 Matt. 5:38-39. 

13 Matt. 7:24-28. 

I* Henry Churchill King, The Laws of Friendship (New York: Mac¬ 
millan Co., 1910), pp. 102-3. 

is Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt, Brace 
& Co., 1938), p. 61. 

is L. P. Jacks, “ The Church and the World,” Hibbert Journal, Oct. 
1906. 








































































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